Tobacco Should Be Banned In The U.S

I just wanted to take a moment to thank codemeister13 for the chance to debate him on this subject. I really think this will be a fun and enjoyable debate. In the spirit of the debate, I decided to put a wad of RedMan in. ;)As readers may recall, this round is for our opening arguments. Thus, I shall not rebut my opponent's arguments until next round. However, my arguments may, in a way, seem as a rebuttal.IntroductionI shall maintain two contentions throughout the course of this debate: Firstly, tobacco products should not be banned in the first place. Secondly, even if we should ban tobacco products, doing so would result in more negative affects than not banning it. Logical statementsNow my opponent has taken the position: [all] Tobacco products should be banned.I shall argue this statement false by showing the truth of the contradictory statement, "Some tobacco products should not be banned" and the contrary statement, "No tobacco products should be banned." Since these statements cannot be true while the statement "All tobacco products should be banned" is true, proving the truth of these two statements will prove the falsity of my opponent's position. (1)C1: Tobacco products should not be banned in the first placeWhy so widespread?According to the American Cancer Society, 19% of adults in America smoke cigarettes (2). This isn't even counting the 8.9 million users of smokeless tobacco (ST), 13.2 million cigar smokers, and 2.2 million pipe smokers (2). In other words, we're dealing with a huge percentage of the American society. Banning tobacco would affect approximately 68.1 million Americans! Since this number is so huge, my opponent must have extremely good arguments before we pass a law affecting so many.Why is it the government's business anyways?If used properly, tobacco only affects the health of the individual using it. Consequently, it is their own business. It doesn't have mind-altering results, and you've never heard of any ads saying "Don't smoke and drive." This asks the question: What business does the government have in this area? Before we can argue something should be banned, it must be an appropriate action in the first place.P1: Whatever directly affects only the individual is an area the government has no business in.P2: Tobacco use (if used properly) affects only the individual.C: Tobacco use is an area the government has no business in.Not all tobaccos are equal!My opponent is also proposing a widescale ban on tobacco. However, there are plenty of smokeless tobacco products which are relatively risk free.The Oral Cancer Foundation has this to say:""I cannot conclude that the use of any tobacco product is a safer alternative to smoking. This message is especially important to communicate to young people, who may perceive smokeless tobacco as a safe form of tobacco use." (U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona, MD, June 2003 testimony) While OCF agrees with this statement, especially in relationship to young individuals, there may be some harm reduction benefit when traditional loose leaf chewing tobacco is compared snus style products, and certainly when compared to with smoking tobacco where combustion of the tobacco is present. This does not mean that we endorse the use of smokeless products" (3)Please note there is a difference between snus (also known as dip) and Swedish Snus. So here we have even the Oral Cancer Foundation disagreeing with the U.S. Surgeon General! Of course, they don't endorse tobacco use, but it seems pretty clear that smokeless tobacco may very well be safer.Now let's turn to Swedish Snus. The American Cancer Society has this to say:"Smokeless tobacco products are less lethal than cigarettes: On average, they kill fewer people than cigarettes. But smokeless tobacco hurts and kills people all the same. Even though they are marketed as a less harmful alternative to smoking, smokeless products can be deadly." (4)Now, I am not arguing that Swedish Snus is 100% safe. It has tobacco, which may cause cancer. However, just saying "It causes xyz" is not enough. We need to know the chances of getting cancer from the tobacco product to truly know how deadly it is. If 1 out of 1,000,000 people died from a product, we could claim "This product causes death" but it might not be very deadly at all.So how dangerous is Swedish Snus? The answer is: Not very.Oral cancer is already extremely rare. In fact, you are more at a chance of getting oral cancer from smoking cigarettes, than you are using Swedish Snus (5). So even if we increase our chances by 2 or 4 times, it's still unlikely to get mouth cancer.Drs. Lee and Hamling did a study in 2009 in which they found absolutely no significant relation between Swedish Snus and oral cancer. (6) They state:"An increased risk of oropharyngeal cancer is evident most clearly for past smokeless tobacco use in the USA, but not for Scandinavian snuff." (6)Drs. Rodu and Cole also presented a study, after which they declared:"This study found that use of chewing tobacco and moist snuff were associated with only minimally elevated risks" (7)Dr. Lee also did a study examining Swedish Snus with heart disease and stroke, concluding: "The Swedish studies provided little evidence of an increase for heart disease (1.06,0.83–1.37, n¼5) or stroke (1.17, 0.80–1.70, n¼2)" (8) He further concluded: "Any CID risk from ST appears to be substantially less than from smoking, and noclear risk from Swedish snuff is seen." (8) Kenneth Warner, PHD and dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor claims:“Snus is the least harmful of the smokeless tobacco products because of how it is produced and stored, and ‘everyone who has studied this agrees there is a 95%–99% reduction in the health risk of snus, compared to use of cigarettes,'" (9)I could go on and on about all the studies which have been done, but I think you get the point. Not all tobacco products are that bad for you. The evidence and studies of Swedish Snus all points towards its relative safety. Why is this? The answer lies in the production. Swedish Snus is produced by steam-heating rather than fermenting (2). This results in less TSNA (cancer causing agents) and explains why Swedish Snus has been proven by countless studies to be safer.C2: Banning tobacco products would cause a bigger problemsWhile completely uncalled for and inappropriate, banning tobacco products would cause huge problems.Loss of moneyIn 2010, the US Government collected $23,958,000,000 in taxes on cigarettes alone. (10) You read that right, 24 billion dollars. Banning tobacco would result in a loss of this money.It's going to happen anywaysNow banning tobacco products isn't going to stop tobacco users from getting tobacco. It doesn't stop drug users from getting drugs, and tobacco is used much more than any drug. So it seems absurd to ban it, since placing a ban would do essentially nothing. All it would do is create a vast black market. As stated above, almost 20% of adults smoke cigarettes. Would banning tobacco stop them? Probably not.It would increase DEA costsNow if we're going to pass this law, we should enforce it. And to combat the resulting black market, we're going to have to increase the DEA. This would result in more money spent by the government.Decreasing workers' efficiencyNumerous studies have shown that nicotine increases worker's efficiency (11). I won't get into all these, but banning tobacco would result in less efficient workers, which would harm businesses, and thus harm the economy.ConclusionIn conclusion, I've held two contentions. One, all tobacco products shouldn't be banned in the first place. And two, banning them would result in extremely negative results which would make a ban just not worth it. The government has no business in banning tobacco, not all tobacco is equally dangerous, and it would have catestrophic results that would harm the economy. For these reasons, as well as many more, tobacco should not be a banned product in the US.Thank you!==Sources==(1)http://plato.stanford.edu...(2)http://www.cancer.org...(3)http://oralcancerfoundation.org...(4)http://www.cancer.org...(5)http://www.tobaccoharmreduction.org...(6)http://www.biomedcentral.com...(7)http://www.harmreductionjournal.com...(8)http://ije.oxfordjournals.org...(9)http://www.pmi.com...(10)http://www.cdc.gov...(11)http://dengulenegl.dk...