15 N.W.2d 98 | Minn. | 1944
The ordinance requires a license of all persons, companies, and corporations who sell cigarettes, without distinction as between retailers, jobbers, wholesalers, and manufacturers. It was enacted, as appears from its title, for the "Good Order of the City, and the Suppression of Vice and Intemperance and the Prevention of Crime." Besides the licensing provisions, there is a section making it an offense to "sell, give to, or in any way furnish any cigarettes, cigarette paper or cigarette wrappers in any form to any person under eighteen years of age, or to any minor pupil in any school, college or university."
Defendant offers as a postulate for a broad attack upon the ordinance that "medical science is generally agreed that cigarettes are not deleterious to humans." In order to test the validity of this statement, let us begin with elements. What does "deleterious" mean? It is defined as "hurtful, morally or physically; injurious, as influence; poisonous; unwholesome." Funk Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary, 1932.
Without assuming to ourselves any expert knowledge on the subject, we express grave doubt as to the accuracy of the claims made for their product by tobacco companies, who have spent millions in attempting to dissuade the public from the thought that the use of cigarettes is harmful physically. Adolescent boys and girls, who form an important, if not the principal, group of radio listeners, may be thereby persuaded; and, with their impressionable minds and their ever-present desire to imitate their elders, many of them unquestionably do acquire the cigarette habit in early youth, in perfect, though misplaced, confidence that not the slightest harm, either physical or moral, can result. But our credulity is not sufficiently robust to give even a semblance of reality to such claims. In fact, much of the discussion on the subject in commercial radio programs and in newspaper and magazine advertisements is directed to the claims that the product which is presently being sponsored causes less throat irritation, orfewer coughs, or in general is less harmful than the rival brands. It seems fair to infer from these conflicting claims that even the nondeleterious physical *38 effect of cigarettes generally is at least a debatable question — one upon which our lawmaking bodies, our legislatures and municipal councils, have the final say in determining what the general welfare of the state or municipality requires.
As to the harmful moral effect of cigarettes upon adolescent boys and girls, any student of or authority upon juvenile behavior and many a parent will testify. See, Detroit Retail Druggists' Assn. v. City of Detroit,
"* * * probably the consideration which has most tended to condemnatory legislation against cigarettes has been their use by the very young. This objectionable fact has undoubtedly been due mainly to the kind of tobacco which has been a general though not universal characteristic of the paper-wrapped cigarette, originally selected because of adaptability to inhalation, but also serving, by reason of its mildness, to remove the protection which nature placed in the way of acquiring habits of use of the more vigorous tobacco commonly used in cigars. Before the day of the cigarette, mastery of the tobacco habit was obstructed by agonies of nausea usually sufficient to postpone it to a period of at least reasonable maturity."
So far as the contest as to the relative merits and demerits of particular brands of cigarettes remains between tobacco companies, it is not serious; it is merely a business, not a social, problem. But if this court should say "amen" to all that has been claimed for cigarettes by their manufacturers and declare any attempted regulation of their sale to be invalid, the social consequences might be tremendous. No court of any state has yet so said, and we do not propose to be the first. On the contrary, every court that has *39 passed upon the question has unqualifiedly affirmed the power of a state, or of a municipality under the general welfare clauses of its charter, to prohibit the sale of cigarettes to minors and students, and to regulate and control, by license or otherwise, the sale and use of cigarettes generally.2 And, if consideration be given to the fact that during the past decade marijuana cigarettes and perhaps other drugged cigarettes, not only harmful but actually poisonous, have found their way into illicit traffic, the need for regulation and control becomes self-evident.
Our own legislature has prohibited the smoking of cigarettes by any person below the age of 18 years. Minn. St. 1941, §
The police power of the legislature in these respects has never been successfully questioned. Both the state and its municipalities have a wide discretion in resorting to that power for the purpose of preserving public health, safety, and morals, or abating public nuisances. Holden v. Hardy,
No specific legislative sanction is needed to vitalize the general welfare clause of a city charter. No express grant of power to legislate upon any particular subject is necessary. Sverkerson v. City of Minneapolis,
Premising its final argument upon the assumption that the Minneapolis ordinance was intended only as a regulation of the sale of cigarettes to minors, defendant urges that "the end sought is fully attained by regulating the retailer," and that to extract license fees from both retailer and wholesaler is unnecessary and unreasonable. Sight is lost of the fact that some dispensers of cigarettes at retail are difficult to control, and that the licensing of wholesalers *41
may be directed to the distribution of cigarettes to irresponsible retailers, who, with or without the license, bootleg the forbidden weed to minors. Granted that wholesalers and retailers might properly be placed in separate classes for the purpose of licensing (33 Am. Jur., Licenses, § 34, p. 359; Note, 62 A.L.R. 109; Knisely v. Cotterel,
Regardless of what point control is aimed at, the sale of cigarettes is a proper target for municipal regulation. Municipalities may differ among themselves as to the necessity and scope of such regulations, but so long as the regulations are adopted in good faith, with an eye single to the public welfare, courts will not interfere. State v. Packer Corp.
"We need not labor the point, long settled, that where legislative action is within the scope of the police power, fairly debatable questions as to its reasonableness, wisdom and propriety are not for the determination of courts, but for that of the legislative body on which rests the duty and responsibility of decision."
We therefore hold the ordinance under attack valid and applicable to retailer and wholesaler alike.
Affirmed.
