The Aldermen Vote to License the 'Weed,' 34 to 27
A year-old cigarette ban had become a dead letter, so Seattle's council moved to regulate rather than forbid — a $600 license, health inspections, a chemical analysis of every pack, and a fight over keeping the trade 1,000 feet from schoolhouses.
War will be waged against cigarettes. Mayor Swift said he would examine the ordinance prohibiting their sale, and if it were defective, would give instructions to enforce it. This law has been a dead letter on the municipal statute books, but it was brought to the attention of the mayor at the meeting of the council last night in an attempt to put through the measure licensing the weed.
Almost a year ago the council passed an ordinance prohibiting the sale of cigarettes. A week ago Alderman Larson got the ordinance providing that an annual license be collected from persons selling cigarettes made a special order for last evening. The ordinance has been in the council for several months and has been the subject of more or less scandal.
It was taken up last evening. The ordinance provides that all applications for licenses to sell cigarettes shall be made to the commissioner of health, who shall refer the application to the mayor. The applicant is required to file a bond, but it is provided that the ordinance shall not be held as authorizing the sale of cigarettes containing opium, morphine, jimson weed, belladonna, glycerine or sugar. It provides for the payment of a license of $600 a year. The commissioner of health is authorized and directed to inspect from time to time all places where cigarettes are sold and also to make an analysis of cigarettes on sale.
Alderman Campbell thought the license was so high it would place the sale of cigarettes in the hands of one or two. He said it would be a monopoly. If the business were legitimate it should be made free. If it were detrimental and illegitimate it should be stamped out. He was opposed to the sale of cigarettes under any condition.
Alderman Greenacre offered an amendment prohibiting the sale within 1,000 feet of any school house and Alderman O'Connor offered one making the license fee $1,000. Both amendments were lost, and the roll was called upon the passage of the ordinance, the result showing 34 in favor of the ordinance and 27 against.
“If the business were legitimate it should be made free. If it were detrimental and illegitimate it should be stamped out.”
Then as now, city hall reached for licensing rather than outright prohibition — and discovered that a ban on the books was useless without enforcement. The 1895 argument over a $600 fee, school-buffer zones and chemical testing of a popular smoke reads like a dress rehearsal for today's fights over taxing and regulating vaping and tobacco.
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