Law is not magic, and prohibitions are not spells

9th June 2026 Again, politicians think that “banning” something is an end to a problem. * This is a topic this blog has addressed before, but the issue never goes away and so the same old points bear repeating. Law is not magic. Prohibitions are not spells. When you make a law against a thing, that thing may not instantly vanish. It is not as if one points a wand and says something in cod-Latin, and the unwanted thing is thereby extinguished. The unwanted thing may instead continue, it is just that further instances of that unwanted thing may be attended with different legal and practical consequences. * Of course, there should be certain prohibitions. But it is naïve – indeed magical – thinking to believe that just because, say, murder is prohibited there will be no more murders. What the prohibition means is that any further murder can be followed by onerous consequences that would not be present if there was not a prohibition. * Sometimes perhaps the prohibition may deter people…