This house would not ban smoking #1

As I suspected, my opponent bases their whole argument around a single industry - cigarettes. This is despite the fact that my opponent concedes cigarettes are harmful, and agrees that when something causes "grave harm" it should be outlawed. I agree with both of these things too, so they're not what this debate is about. This debate is about whether the harms of smoking tobacco are great enough to warrant making it illegal.Per my opponent's strange rules, I must reserve my rebuttals until next round. I'll keep this round short since my opponent has the burden of proof and I want to emphasize my rebuttal a little more.SMOKING IS ADDICTIVEYes it is (http://www.pureinsight.org...). Quitting smoking is really, really hard. That's why many governments need to subsidize support services for those wishing to quit. A smoker will develop a natural resistance to smoking over time, and thus increase their usage of cigarettes to get the same addictive effect. This isn't a rational choice people make - cigarettes have literally altered the smoker's brain to make them want cigarettes.SMOKING IS DEADLYThis has been known for over a century. Here's a pretty picture from 1905 proving the point: http://upload.wikimedia.org...There is an almost exact correlation that I have noticed between smoking rates and the degree of education in any given country. The more you know about cigarettes, the more you realize that there isn't one good reason to smoke them. Lung cancer is the world's leading cause of death. More than 80% of all lung cancer has been linked to smoking. I don't think I need to give you a long, graphic and gruesome description of just how bad it is for smokers (although if you need one, you can find one here: http://www.tobacco-facts.info...) because we already know this stuff. More people die from it in the US than every other drug (including alcohol), cars, AIDs, suicides, homicides and fires combined (http://healthliteracy.worlded.org...). The evidence is overwhelming. Smoking literally causes "grave harm".SMOKING IS POINTLESSMost people who smoke start in their teens, and most teens who smoke do it to look cool or adult (http://healthliteracy.worlded.org...). There is no other real reason to pick up smoking because it's an acquired taste - believe it or not the taste of cigarettes is even worse than the smell for a non-smoker. These motivations often change as the person gets older (mostly due to the addiction factor as the brain attempts to rationalize the habit), but the fact that older people still do it keeps it cool enough for another generation to keep going with it. The costs are massive, and the benefits are ephemeral at best. Properly understood, smoking confers no benefit at all. This is why despite the addiction, almost 70% of US smokers want to kick the habit right now (http://www.cdc.gov...).SMOKING IS EXPENSIVERight now, the cigarette industry is controlled by a few big multinationals like Philip Morris and Reynolds American (http://en.wikipedia.org...). These companies make lots and lots of money off the backs of smokers - money that's not being invested into local businesses, into the community, or into improving the smoker's lives in any meaningful way. Meanwhile, ordinary folk like me have to pay for the hospitals when smokers get sick (as they often do). When smokers die young (which they do twice as often), they're not able to work anymore, meaning a loss of skills and labor that hurts the economy more. Aside from the almost hegemonic control that big tobacco exerts over the third world, taking their little money to sell them death, this represents a significant malinvestment on the part of everyone involved.Aside from money, it is often forgotten that smoking takes a great deal of time. When a smoker feels the urge to smoke during work, for example, that's time that they're not working. For teenagers who start smoking, they're not in school. Smokers aren't outside cleaning up the streets or inside writing novels, because they're too busy poisoning themselves.SMOKING RUINS COMMUNITIESYes, secondhand smoke is actually a thing. Breathing in any other person's smoke - however little, however briefly - puts your health in jeopardy also. Any dispersion of the smoke in the air is almost completely countered by the fact that you're not breathing the smoke through a filter. After smoking the chemicals can linger for days and even latch onto surfaces around the house, negating the effects of ventilation if available. It is as easy to detect a smoker's home as it is a meth lab. The chemicals here are even more deadly - ordinary tobacco smoke contains around 40 carcinogens, while secondhand smoke contains over 70 (http://www.cdc.gov...). Oftentimes others do not have a choice and must enter the home of a smoker. This may be anyone from government workers to the smoker's own children.Communities are also torn apart indirectly. Families with a smoker will often hate that smoker's habit due to the costs on the rest of the family. Non-smokers will often want to disassociate from smokers. Having "smoking" and "non-smoking" areas segregates people. Even the mere presence of a smoker in the neighborhood might be taken to be unsightly to some, which is part of why smoking is already banned in many universities and restaurants.SO ... WHY SHOULD WE NOT NOT BAN SMOKING?If we put aside the fact that what my opponent told you last round was all wrong, as I look forward to justifying in my rebuttal next round, I believe I have demonstrated sufficient harms to prove that smoking is harmful enough to warrant making it illegal. As we both agree something that is sufficiently harmful should be made illegal, we must logically accept that where cigarettes are posing such a great harm as they are under the status quo, they must be banned.