In March 1905, Indiana made it illegal to sell cigarettes or the paper used to make cigarettes, and also made it illegal to possess cigarettes. There was, evidently, a concerted effort to ban cigarette smoking across the country, a movement that 100 years later is still going strong.

In the Dec. 3, 1905 NYT is a short article suggesting that the son of William B. Leeds of New York was fined $25 and court costs for violating the new law. Supposedly the offense was committed "at a recent social function." It sounds like the young Mr. Leeds pushed somebody's button and when he lit up, said somebody called the PoPo.

From an April 25, 1905 letter to the editor about anti-smoking laws, we find some rational words (still applicable today):

In the old days we, as a people, were content to have the Government let us alone, and the more severely it did so the better we weer pleased. Now we rush to the Government for everything. IF we want "prosperity" we ask it of the Government, or if we want women to be well mannered enough to take off their huge hats in the theaters, we ask the "Government" to compel them to do so. In other words, if now we want something, instead of getting it for ourselves, as our forefathers were content to do, we rush to the "Government," whether it be city, state, or national, and ask that it be given to us.

The letter writer goes on to say:

...while the use, or if you will, the abuse, of tobacco, liquor, etc., is exceedingly harmful and will in many cases cause great misery to the individual, more harm will be done to us as a whole people by acquiring the habit of dependence on the Government than good will be achieved by such legislation as that of which Indiana has given us the most recent specimen.

Amen, brother.

In what would be evidence today that Hades had frozen over, the Times stated in an April, 18th editorial:

For the prejudice against the cigarette there is absolutely no intelligent basis. If one opposes the use of tobacco his position is perfectly intelligible and to a great extent defensible. If he tolerates it or approves it, but denounces cigarette smoking as a vice, he is not necessarily a fool, but he certainly displays an ignorance of the elements of chemistry and hygiene of which a man of average intelligence should be ashamed.

This in itself is good enough, but the very next paragraph reminds us that there was a time when even the NYT was a champion of freedom:

The Indiana cigarette law is an outrage in its invasion of personal liberty and its interference with legitimate trade. It cannot for a moment be defended upon any ground that the suppression of the cigarette comes within the police powers of a State. If it could, precisely the same argument would apply with greater force to other forms of tobacco and with equal force to the sale and use of tea and coffee, which probably do a much greater amount of harm than results from tobacco.