I was raised in the smacking era and one thing I'll never forget is questioning why I was getting hit and/or punished.

For me I didn't get educated so I never learnt what I was actually doing wrong and I think that was the key feature really missing.

For me, smacking would be on the table but instead of a first resolution to get children to stop misbehaving it would be education followed by pretty much everything else and only as a last resort. 

This is vastly different than beating your child black and blue by the way, very very different. One is discipline and the other is just pure child abuse.

I've have very close friends who had the latter done to them and they've grown up to be the most nicest people with no mental health issues at all, and they don't look back and see anything wrong with discipline their child but not to the extent that they got treated. Which again, obviously I agree with what I've already stated above.

But it's very important. I think you try every other method available before even going to this method because if evidence shows there is a link to depression and anxiety (both which I have, or did, not really so much anymore and I do not blame that on my parents. I believe it's from other sources such as bullying, etc) then you should try every other method first because children that would be prone to that would respond to other things first, I strongly believe, So most likely would not even need to get to the end result of disciplining their child by smacking.

But I do believe a blanket solution is incorrect because every child responds completely different. Just like every person responds completely different to every situation. No person is exactly the same so you cannot put a blanket solution on anything.

In medicine we see this first hand. No medication is going to work for every single person. No single therapy is going to work for every single person.

So if we try to try to provide blanket solutions and and / or bans (which some countries have and you can see how rife the youth are crime wise, behaviour wise etc) then you can really fail on a much greater level.