Smoking tobacco should be illegalised completely.

We have come to the end of the debate. In spite of not being persuaded, I have to admit that I'm very impressed with amieturtl3. She's an intelligent, articulate, and challenging opponent. She made me think about an issue I had never really thought that much about. I have to admit there have been times when I've wished smoking were illegal just because I can't stand being around people who smoke, and I hate seeing cigarette butts laying around. But having given it closer thought because of this debate, I'm now persuaded that a ban on smoking would do more harm to our society than good. In the last round, I showed how banning smoking would create a heavier tax burden on the government than keeping it legal since banning smoking would have little affect on the cost of medical care, but it would have a great affect on the cost of law enforcement as well as loss of revenue from those who will be out of work. (I thought of another reason, but I guess it would be unfair to bring it up at this point.) amieturtl3 sought to off-set the increased tax burden by fining criminals who got caught smoking illegally. But I do not think revenue from fines would do much to off-set the extra cost of law enforcement. If fines were enough to pay for law enforcement, then law enforcement wouldn't require the extra income from tax money. And think of all the costs that would be required--more police officers, more jails, more court costs, etc. Remember that if smoking became illegal, we wouldn't just be fining people who smoked. We'd have to deal with people who produced and sold tobacco illegally. We'd have to deal with the crime organizations that would form around the production of illegal tobacco products. We can't just fine those people. We'd have to prosecute them and put them in jail because trafficking and dealing are much more serious crimes than just using. Once they're in jail, we'd also have to pay for their livelihood, e.g., food, clothing, water, sewage, electricity, etc. It's expensive to keep people in jail. Fines barely cover administrative costs. Speaking of organized crime, amieturtl3 still thinks things are different today than during prohibition where there were mob killings and such. Does she not realize that there are still mob killings between rival drug dealers and traffickers today? Why would tobacco be any different? How many times have we heard reports on the evening news about a killing that resulted from a drug deal gone bad? I explained in my earlier post why we should expect things to actually be worse with illegal tobacco than with illegal drugs. The reason is because there is higher demand for tobacco than for illegal drugs. I made the point earlier that the tax burden due to health issues wouldn't change much if smoking were illegal since people would still smoke illegally. Amieturtl3 suggested a compromise--that we make people pay for their own self-inflicted illnesses. But that is highly impractical. The government would have to prove that the illness was self-inflicted, which would be well nigh impossible. And aren't most health issues self-inflicted? What if somebody has a heat stroke because of training too hard at sports? What if somebody gets diabetes because they ate too many brownies? Should accidents that could have been avoided be considered "self-inflicted"? Besides that, what do we do with people who get lung cancer but can't afford to pay for their own health care? Should we just toss them out in the streets and let them die? I don't think amieturtl3's suggestion of compromise would ever work in the real world. It was a neat idea, though. The end. Thank you, amieturtl3, for an incredibly mentally stimulating debate. This is actually the best and most challenging debate I've had on this web site so far. I hope to debate with you again some time. Take care!