The late Sheikh Sayyed Ad-Darsh, former Chairman of the UK's Shariah Council states:''The reason why there are strong actions against things like murder and adultery is because these are crime against society.But you cannot expect Islam to be a religion that carries a big stick for everything.There has to be an area for the moral and spiritual upbringing of the person in these circumstances ,to let him or her become familiar with things which are prohibited, and to develop moral perception.Smoking in the way we know it was not a common practice at the time of the Prophet Muhammad SAW.It came into fore in the last two centuries or so.So it is a new development for the Muslim community and it took the Muslim scholar great deal of time and effort to consider the harmful effect of smoking,until they come to the conclusion that it is HARAM(prohibited).Once again,abstention from smoking is left to the moral sense of the person.
As for drinking alcohol,there is a specific Hadith for that.In the early days of Islam,people who had stopped drinking prohibited others and those who committed the offence were lashed 40 times.They use to flail the drinker with anything that came to hand-a piece of cloth,a shoe,a stick-just to let the person feel that he or she had indulged in something prohibited.Later on when there was a complaint that people were returning to the old ways of drinking, Umar Al Khattab consulted him around and Ali Abi Talib said.''I think that drinking will make a person lose his mind and consequently start to abusing others ,uttering false accusations against them.So i think he deserves the same punishment to a person who falsely accuses other person(Qadhif) that is 80 lashes.''Hence,that became the standard of punishment for drinkers to stop them from falling into that.
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