Smoking should be made illegal

Just for clarification, yes I did mean in the US. Thanks for correcting my statistics and yours are absolutely the correct statistics in regards to American smoker deaths per year. While you did provide some correct statistics, not all of them were correct or the best stats to use. The statement "Smoking results in a life expectancy 14 years shorter than a nonsmoker" is incorrect. If you read the statement from the source you cited it actually says that "The life expectancy for a smoker in the United States is about 64, which is 14 years shorter than the national average". The problem with this statistic is that the national life expectancy includes that of smokers and non smokers. If we look to some research done by Dr. Akwasi Osei, the Chief Psychiatrist at Accra Psychiatric Hospital, he says that "Tobacco shortens the lifespan of smokers by 25 years. In addition 70% of people who begin smoking in there teens die by age 45". 41% of men who smoked a pack or more a day died in middle age compared to 14% of men who never smoked [1]. And I don't know if you read the entire article from Live Science but they talk about cancer a bit and say a couple of interesting things. "Smoking accounts for 30 percent of all cancer deaths and 87 percent of lung cancer deaths; the risk of developing lung cancer is about 23 times higher in male smokers compared to non-smokers; smoking is associated with increased risk of at least 15 types of cancer; [and] smoking causes millions of deaths worldwide."[2] Smoking is damaging to your health. This is something we both agree on. The next part of my opponents reasoning for not banning smoking was interesting to me. He said that we can't ban smoking because that would be like banning alcohol (the Prohibition failed, I'm not arguing that). However I believe that these are two VERY separate issues. Firstly this is because tobacco is much more addictive than alcohol [3]. According to Michael M. Miller, MD, an addiction medicine specialist, the medical director of the NewStart Alcohol/Drug Treatment Program at Meriter Hospital in Madison, Wis. He is also the president of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and an associate clinical professor at the University of Wisconsin School of Medicine and Public Health, about 15% of people that drink regularly become addicted compared to 45% of people that smoke. Secondly, smoking only ends in death. When you follow the directions on a pack of cigarettes you put over 4,800 chemicals, 69 of which are known to cause cancer, directly into your lungs. Smoking is so harmful that cigarette smoking has been identified as the most important source of preventable morbidity (disease and illness) and premature mortality (death) [in the world]. [4] Lastly smoking indirectly hurts everyone. The people who harm themselves by smoking are a drain on both the American health care system and the American economy. Smoking cost the United States over $193 billion in 2004, including $97 billion in lost productivity and $96 billion in direct health care expenditures, or an average of $4,260 per adult smoker. [5] While my opponent asks for a Con vote simply because it would be similar to the Prohibition. I am willing to agree that there are some basic similarities, but fundamentally these two issues are radically different. I have shown how dangerous smoking really is, and how harmful smoking can be to all Americans. Tobacco is not alcohol and they must be treated differently. Because this will be my last post on this debate I just wanted to thank you for a clean and welcoming first experience to Debate.org. I am glad that I got to debate someone who actually knows what they are talking about even if we stand on opposite sides of this issue. I hope I didn't offend you at all because that was in no way my intent. Best of luck to you! -Frost [1] http://www.inforesearchlab.com... [2] http://www.livescience.com... [3] http://www.health.com... [4] http://www.lung.org... [5] http://www.lung.org...