Tobacco should be banned

People have the right to harm their own bodies should they choose to do so.While the government and private entities have the right to place public smoking bans, such as in certain restaurants and bars or on government owned property, the government has no right to prohibit people from using tobacco in private should they choose to do so. There is no legitimate legal basis for preventing people from smoking tobacco in the privacy of their own homes, where the dangers of second-hand smoke are nonexistent. There are plenty of ways that people commit self-harm that are perfectly legal, such as not getting enough sleep, eating too much or too little, getting no exercise, skipping medication, or taking on a high-stress workload. Should the government ban these things too?The answer, of course, is no. If someone wants to harm themselves in the privacy of their own home, nobody has the right to stop them. So to answer the question that Pro posed to me in the second round, yes, it should be okay to do cocaine, cannabis, bath salts, or drinking in excess, just like it should be okay to eat too many fatty foods or skip meals. As long as these actions are done within the privacy of one's home, then these actions can only have consequences on the person doing them.Second-hand smoke is not enough justification to completely ban tobaccoTo completely eliminate the problem that second-hand smoke creates, all that is needed to be done is to put a restriction on where people can smoke. By eliminating the use of tobacco on public property, we in turn eliminate the dangers of second-hand smoke without completely banning tobacco. Like I said earlier, people still have the right to smoke in their homes where their actions harm nobody but themselves.There is absolutely zero justification for a complete tobacco banMy opponent stated that tobacco use is the leading cause of preventable death in the United States. While this is true, the leading cause of preventable death in the world is Hypertension [1], or high levels of stress and high blood pressure. This is usually the result of stress-inducing jobs. Given my opponent's argument so far, I suppose we should ban high-stress jobs too, right? The number two cause of preventable death in the U.S is obesity, so I suppose we should also completely ban all food with high levels of trans fat and sugar.Wrong. As long as an individual is not posing harm to others, they should be free to do whatever they want to themselves. If that means smoking tobacco or eating fatty foods or working a high stress job, then fine. These are all things that you should have the freedom to choose. I have the freedom to choose whether or not to smoke and I choose not to. But as soon as you let the government make that choice for you, then its just getting closer and closer to a nanny state that completely restricts what its citizens can and cannot do."The whole point of this country is if you wanna eat garbage, balloon up to 600 pounds and die of a heart attack at 43, you can! You are free to do so!" - Ron Swanson, Parks and Recreation [2]To summarizeRisk of self-harm is not a good enough justification for a complete tobacco ban. The threat of second-hand smoke is nonexistent as long as smoking is disallowed in pubic places, which means that a complete ban on tobacco is not required to solve this problem. Every citizen has the right to do what they want with their bodies, and the government or anyone else should not have any say in that whatsoever.Citations:1. http://en.wikipedia.org...2. http://www.imdb.com...