The production and consumption of cigarettes should be stopped

Thank You for accepting my challenge. Let me reiterate that this debate was created in order for me to get a better understanding of smokers. I am not preaching people should quit or feel bad as I believe what people do with their own money, time, and body is truly up to them. So let"s get into it. The simplest definition of a "cigarette" is a combination of tobacco & chemicals rolled in paper. What are the chemicals we ask? We"ve all seen the pictures with the rat poison and tar that health organizations put out. So I wanted to get the content list from the tobacco companies themselves. Luckily, this had already been done. A compiled ingredient lists from 5 different tobacco companies submitted to the Dept. of Health was presented on this website (http://www.tricountycessation.org...). This included some 599 additives which were indeed approved by the US Government as food additives but what is scary is that it also states that burning these additives released over 4000 chemical compounds of which 69 are known to cause cancer. Not only are these chemicals inhaled into the smoker"s lungs, they are released into their immediate surrounding environment for any other person, animal or plant to inhale. Smokers and non-smokers alike do not seem to like the taste or smell of cigarettes unless it reminded them of someone they are fond of so I assumed it must be more to do with the feeling they get kind of like marijuana smokers and alcohol drinkers. So I read a neuroscience report from LiveScience (http://www.livescience.com...) [I tried looking for a scholarly paper on the neurological reasons behind feeling good after smoking but I couldn"t so I"m referencing this website] on smoking triggering chemicals in the brain that made one feel good. It showed findings from a study done by the University of Michigan which states that these are the same chemicals triggered by heroine and morphine which leads to a question why isn"t heroine or morphine available over the counter like cigarettes. One positive comment I found about cigarettes is that it does indeed feel very good to smokers after a long day when you finally light one up on an appropriately named website called http://www.smokingfeelsgood.com.... However, he does mention that this is the case once you are addicted. But rather than the feeling of smoking a cigarette, perhaps he is talking about the feeling addicts get when they get their "fix". Other than health reasons, there is that argument about the tobacco industry creating jobs and tax dollars etc. Although this is true on some levels, one has to realize that just because the tobacco industry is gone, the money is not gone too. People spending money on cigarettes will use that money somewhere else. That other industry will start to rise, creating jobs and tax dollars. This is indeed shown in a paper by Amanda Sandford and Clive Bates about the effects of tobacco control policies (http://w.ash.org.uk...) Looking through these documents, I do not know why cigarettes have not been banned besides the sole purpose that tobacco companies flex their muscles and push governments to protect their profits. Profits made from slowly but surely killing people.