Banning is dangerous in two main ways: it says 'you, the individual, are no longer free to do this'. And it also risks driving activities underground.
It's also a pretty blunt instrument as, let's face it, most Powers That Be tend to lack the resources to police their own bans. Plenty of under-16s have sex in the UK, for instance, despite its being illegal.
But aside from the rather fundamental issues of freedom and operability, there's the craw-sticking, gear-grinding feeling of knee-jerk stupidity.
Taking alcohol first, which is fast becoming a 'demerit good' to rival that of tobacco, I read an insightful article today on how alcohol advertising is being used by the Health Select Committee as a scapegoat to cover up the real problems behind increased alcohol consumption.
The subject of the article, Tim Ambler, posits that in a mature market such as alcohol consumption, the effect of advertising Carlsberg, for instance, would be to drive brand preference rather than causing people to drink beer in the first place - as opposed to tea, perhaps.
Analysing the HSC's decisions further, the 9pm watershed also seems a bit bonkers. Do we honestly believe that ten year olds, who are classed as at risk of drinking alcohol - for whatever reason, be it lack of parental control, peer pressure, glamour motivation - are tucked up in bed at 8.59pm?
This is not a useful ban: this is a ban that says: we don't know the real causes, instead we're just going to be seen to be doing something. And banning it has the air of something useful.
Looking now at a totally different example - today's banning of Islam4UK's march in Wooton Bassett - it's clear that Alan Johnson also subscribes to the 'if unsure, ban it' credo.
Whether or not this march is tantamount to spitting in the eyes of the family members who have lost loved ones in the war in Afghanistan, or whether we think this is a justifiable response to foreign policy ... or whether the group really does promote terrorism (which is the most mootable of points itself), the likely truth is that banning the march will do little more (if successful) than make the event go more smoothly on the day.
I'd argue instead that the media attention so far has already served the group's purpose, and the fact that Omar Bakri Muhammed has also indicated that this is a group whose efforts, if banned, will be driven underground, is also suggestive of a failed meta-strategy.
The real, underlying causes of each of the above examples are without doubt hard to ascertain, and they're not going to be attributable to a single convenient insight that might have been lurking undetected at the bottom of some policy wonk's sock drawer.
Referring back to the alcohol topic, an article in yesterday's New Scientist examined the difficulty that scientists have had in locating the underlying cause of its misuse - as well as identifying some of the convenient 'truths' that have been popularly aired along the way. Alcoholism is closer to being understood, the answers are multifarious and complicated, but that doesn't mean they don't deserve being reached.
And it certainly doesn't mean that we should be fobbed off by meaningless bans: they encumber the pursuit of the real truths, penalise many more than deserve it, and above all (for the sake of this article) actively demote the infinitely more valuable culture of rigorous and intelligent thinking.
