Resolved: Tobacco use should be banned in the United States

Framework Pro will support that something ought to be banned if there is a net detriment to society, as the goal of a government is to better the lives of its people. Contention 1: Cost http://www.cancer.org...... http://wellness.truman.edu...... For some reason can't paste images. But I can paste the link to the image.Economic "benefits" of smoking are easily outweighed. According to the American Cancer Society, tobacco related healthcare costs and loss of productivity netted 193 billion in the US. Every pack of cigarettes, which is on average 6.36, costs society $35. Tobacco use is bad for society as a whole because non smokers are forced to pay part of the medical bills and nonsmokers also get the disease. Half of people who continue to smoke will die of smoke-related illnesses. http://www.nytimes.com...... The Federal govenment states that it costs society around 52 billion a year, but even this could be an underestimation, as "Dr. Banzhaf asserted that the Government did not take into account diseases of nonsmokers that could be attributed to smoking by others." Either way, tobacco usage has such a large economically detrimental effect that is should be banned. Even non users must foot the medical bill, as the government helps pay for medical bills of people who are unable to, and non smokers must pay the tazes to the government Contention 2: For the Users themselves As Dr. Sullivan said 'Cigarettes are the only legal product that when used as intended cause death,'. http://www.cdc.gov...... Cigarettes have over 7,000 chemicals according to CDC. Hundreds of those are toxic and 70 are carcinogens. The government ought to ensure the well being of its citizens and ban smoking. http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com...... According to Dr Robert N Proctor, Department of History, Stanford University, cigarettes kill 6 million people a year. "Big tobacco has corrupted science by sponsoring "decoy" or "distraction research",5 but it has also corrupted popular media, insofar as newspapers and magazines dependent on tobacco advertising for revenues have been reluctant to publish critiques of cigarettes.7 The industry has corrupted even the information environment of its own workforce, as when Philip Morris paid its insurance provider (CIGNA) to censor the health information sent to corporate employees.8 Tobacco companies have bullied, corrupted or exploited countless other institutions: the American Medical Association, the American Law Institute, sports organisations, fire-fighting bodies, Hollywood, the US Congress"even the US presidency and US military. President Lyndon Johnson refused to endorse the 1964 Surgeon General's report, for instance, fearing alienation of the tobacco-friendly South. Cigarette makers managed even to thwart the US Navy's efforts to go smoke-free. In 1986, the Navy had announced a goal of creating a smoke-free Navy by the year 2000; tobacco-friendly congressmen were pressured to thwart that plan, and a law was passed requiring that all ships sell cigarettes and allow smoking. The result: American submarines were not smoke-free until 2011" The smoking industry infamously proclaimed for years with false research that smoking was safe. This resulted in misinformation and millions of easily preventable deaths. This also nullifies any so called economic benefit of smoking, as most of the studies meant to portray tobacco positively are sponsored by the corporations themselves. They have a monetary incentive to keep the industry alive by killing people and getting them addicted to smoking. Tobacco is a highly addictive poison because of nicotine, which makes smokers physically reliant on smoking. Most smokers want to quit but cannot. http://www.gallup.com...... http://www.cdc.gov...... 85% of smokers have tried to quit, according to Gallup. According to Center of Disease Control this number is at 68.9 percent. The fact is that most smokers do not even want to smoke but smoking once or doing a dumb mistake forces them to smoke for the rest of their lives, inevitably killing them and harming everyone around them. Robert Proctor rebuts the freedom argument with "The freedom objection is weak, however, given how people actually experience addiction. Most smokers "enjoy" smoking only in the sense that it relieves the pains of withdrawal; they need nicotine to feel normal. People who say they enjoy cigarettes are rather rare"so rare that the industry used to call them "enjoyers". Surveys show that most smokers want to quit but cannot; they also regret having started. Tobacco industry executives have long grasped the point: Imperial Tobacco's Robert Bexon in 1984 confided to his Canadian cotobacconists that "If our product was not addictive we would not sell a cigarette next week".12 American cigarette makers have been quietly celebrating addiction since the 1950s, when one expressed how "fortunate for us" it was that cigarettes "are a habit they can't break"." Contention 3: Secondhand Smoke This contention is enough to win the debate. Voters, pay attention. Seconhand smoke nullifies freedom, as recipients of secondhand smoke do not choose to smoke, they simply breathe and suffer the effects of others selfishly choosing to smoke. http://www.surgeongeneral.gov...... The Surgeon General Report concluded that 2.5 million American citizens died of secondhand smoke since 1964. What more do you need for an all-out ban? Con's counterplan of restricting smoking to private places will not help as smoking in private simply keeps the smoke inside the home and will cause the secondhand smoke to go straight to all the other people inside the home- such as the other family members, especially children. http://www.cdc.gov...... "It is estimated that secondhand smoke caused nearly 34,000 heart disease deaths each year during 2005"2009 among adult nonsmokers in the United States.""Secondhand smoke exposure caused more than 7,300 lung cancer deaths each year during 2005"2009 among adult nonsmokers in the United States." (This is citing the previous Surgeon General Report) http://www.cdc.gov...... A study by David M. Homa, PhD1, Linda J. Neff, PhD1, Brian A. King, PhD1, Ralph S. Caraballo, PhD1, Rebecca E. Bunnell, PhD1, Stephen D. Babb, MPH1, Bridgette E. Garrett, PhD1, Connie S. Sosnoff, MA2, Lanqing Wang, PhD found that from 2011-12, 58 million people were exposed to secondhand smoke. "Exposure to secondhand smoke (SHS) from burning tobacco products causes sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), respiratory infections, ear infections, and asthma attacks in infants and children, and coronary heart disease, stroke, and lung cancer in adult nonsmokers (1,2). No risk-free level of SHS exposure exists (2). SHS exposure causes more than 41,000 deaths among nonsmoking adults and 400 deaths in infants each year, and approximately $5.6 billion annually in lost productivity " Contention 4: Environmental http://tobaccofreeca.com...... " In 2005, an estimated 135 million pounds of cigarette butts were dumped into the U.S. environment.2 Cigarette butts are the most common toxic waste found in cleanups and the number one item found on California highways.3 4 And contrary to popular belief, they do not decompose completely.5" Cigarettes have toxic chemicals in them that threaten aquatic ecosystems when they leak out, according to( Slaughter, E., Gersberg, R., Watanabe, K., Rudolph, J., Novotny, T.E., "Toxicity of Cigarette Butts, and their Chemical Components to Marine and Freshwater Fish, Atherinops affinis and Pimephales promelas,"). http://www.mparks.org...... "cigarette filters, cigar tips, and tobacco packaging accounted for 38% of worldwide debris". These numbers are from Ocean Conservancy's International Coastal Cleanups A ban would be effective, as "Smokefree beach laws help reduce butts on beaches by 45% according to the Audubon Society". Banning will reduce the vast litter amount. http://www.lcc.edu...... "Globally, approximately 4.3 trillioncigarette butts are littered every year. Smokers in the USA account for over 250 billion cigarette butts, in the UK 200 tons of butts are discarded, and Australian smokers litter over 7 billion cigarette butts annually. In most Western countries cigarette butt litter accounts for around 50% of all litter. Every littered cigarette butt can take anywhere from two to twenty-five years to biodegrade. Dropped cigarette butts have been the cause of house and apartment fires, as well as some of the largest and most destructive forest fires. Fires caused by cigarette butts claim the lives of about 1,000 people and injure about 3,000 people each year." http://tobaccosmoke.exposurescience.org...... "When people congregate in an airport baggage area or enter a smoking lounge where many brands are smoked, the average amount of PM2.5 mass emitted per cigarette is about 14 mg (see Reference 3). Although 14 mg may not seem like a lot of mass emitted, each cigarette weighs only about 0.9 grams total, making it an extremely potent source of air pollution for its weight. As we shall see in subsequent chapters of this booklet, the 14 mg of particles emitted by each cigarette is really a large amount of particulate matter mass, causing extremely high indoor air pollutant concentrations when a cigarette is smoked at home or in a car. The chapter "Where does the smoke go?" presents calculations that you can do yourself to illustrate that a single cigarette smoked indoors is a potent source of exposure to toxic pollutants, causing concentrations indoors that are often higher than the federal air quality standards designed to protect public health in ambient air outdoors." https://www.ncdps.gov...... Cigarettes cause air pollution, which will happen even if smoked inside, as ventilation ensures it flows outside. Cigarettes are a major source of litter pollution, which costs millions to clean up. Litter costs around 11 billion to clean. If we use the cigarette litter estimate of 38%, this is 4.18 billion a year. Conclusion Tobacco use is detrimental to society as a whole by causing addiction and death even to non users. It wrecks the environment and economy. Thus, I affirm