This house would not ban smoking #1

No idea how that round could be construed to be "without Rebuttals" as my opponent's rules stipulated, so I'll ignore the rule too. I'm advocating a change in the status quo. I'm saying that the courts and governments of the world (with minor exceptions, such as Bhutan where cigarettes are completely banned already) have got it wrong. It's irrelevant to this debate what the courts and governments are saying right now. As my opponent wanted it in round one, however, they carry the burden of proof. They need to show why the governments of the world have got it right. Their only remaining justification is that it couldn't be completely enforced. No law can, but that doesn't mean we should have no laws. SMOKING IS BADWe both agreed that when something is really bad (in my opponent's words, causes "grave harm") it should be banned. This is why this argument has always been connected to the motion. Governments should ban bad things. I have shown that cigarettes do no good. Pro has not shown any good except for constantly reaffirming that there must be something good or else nobody would keep smoking - I like to call it addiction, and I don't think it's good. Pro has never proven any good from smoking outside of his imagination, except perhaps dropped arguments like job losses. On a simple cost-benefit analysis, cigarettes lose. My opponent notes that it's the role of the government to decide this. Actually no, we're debating the topic, not the government. In reality it's also the role of the government to decide whether to not ban smoking. Pro denies the addiction is that bad. It's not true. Nicotine creates more dependance than heroin and stronger withdrawal symptoms than cocaine (. http://drugwarfacts.org...). Yes, a lot of people have quit, but that's because there's a lot of smokers. Some will always have ultra-strong willpower, and even they almost never are able to quit on their first try. You can't just wake up one morning, decide to quit, and then be smoke free. It's a long, difficult effort that genuinely hurts, taking months if not years. Even so most people fail and must try again. It may be a statistic I've used a lot, but that's because it's so important - 70% have already decided to stop. This is not true of cocaine or heroin. Smokers are drug addicts. Should we blame cigarettes and the companies behind them? YES, absolutely. Of course there are occasional confounding variables, although pro has not proven any - but the point is that, after more than a century of exposure to the dangers, coupled with the extremely high incidence of cases where smoking can be directly isolated among the other factors as the cause of death, we know exactly how deadly they are. We know they give people terrible diseases. Citing that they only die a decade earlier (which is still a lot of time by the way - and I should add that more recent research actually shows 15 years instead of 10) is not sufficient because death is not the only harm of cigarettes. It's also ongoing illnesses, and harms to others. The former my opponent has liked to ignore. Not all diseases kill, although smoking usually does. My opponent lists other products that are also harmful (although alcohol and road accidents combined are still less deadly than cigarettes, as I've shown before). I told you the reason why cigarettes are different is because they cannot be used safely, whilst drinking in moderation is safe, and driving safely is safe. Talking about harms to others. My opponent claims families and communities have never broken down because of smoking. This is. again, simply not true (. http://www.livestrong.com...). It's an attempt to ignore my substantial analysis. But even if people are NOT outraged, they should be! Hundreds of thousands die annually from second-hand smoke. My opponent has by now advocated creating special "smoking rooms" in the houses of smokers, a plainly new argument in the final round. Still there are numerous flaws in the plan, such as the rather obvious fact that the room can't be guarenteed to be airtight. Pro said he'd look more into my murder analogy, but didn't. Secondhand smoke is manslaughter at best (if the user was unaware that cigarettes were harmful, for example, although given the warning labels they'd have to be extraordinarily dumb), and murder at worst. In the final round he also completely ignores all my substantive analysis about lost money and lost time. Point is that smoking is bad. It's a problem. It's harmful. It's deadly. There are more than sufficient grounds to ban it. GOVERNMENTS SHOULD TOTALLY DO ITGovernments forbid cannabis because of the harms to the users. If my opponent agrees all illegal drugs should rightly be illegal, and that the harms caused are the qualifier for being illegal, then how about making something more deadly, more dangerous and more powerful illegal too? I used to room with a guy who was a moderate cannabis smoker. One day he decided to quit. And he did. It was that easy. Didn't even have to try twice. His friends even tried to tempt him back into smoking cannabis, and he kept off it. But it's more than just the addiction - it's also all the other harms, and the lack of a clear benefit, to society in general. If there are other products that are more deadly I'd be happy to ban those too. Vodka just so happens to not meet the standard, and thus should be allowed. I believe the spirit of democracy is actually to govern by the people. The people are saying they don't want cigarettes. People are suffering needlessly. You don't need a nanny state to end a still greater persecution - not by the government but by the cigarette companies - in order to effect a change, because I've already shown that the incentives are created to end smoking even if no smokers are ever caught under my proposal. Nor do I believe we live in nanny states just because our governments look out for hundreds of drugs already. Besides that, it sends a message, and a very good one at that. The claim that I've never related the harm to the resolution is absurd. Just scroll back up and see for yourself. We agreed that governments should ban bad things. There's only one question I'd like you to honestly ask yourself - are cigarettes doing more harm than good? Think about it carefully. If my opponent has not met the burden that they declared they had in round one, of proving more good than harm from smoking (harms being their qualifier, not mine), then I win this debate. The resolution is negated.