This house would not ban smoking #1

Following his lead I too will structure this more thematically, although I see the points of clash a little differently.1) Is smoking really that bad? Pro has time and time again tried to tell you that smoking is, at most, a minor contributing factor in the deaths of some smokers. This could not be further from the truth. First of all, non-smokers die too. My opponent seems to be unwilling to engage with this. In the USA, that causes over 46,000 cases of heart disease every year (. http://www.cancer.gov...). You heard that right - causes. The idea that tobacco smoke, a multi-carcinogen, does not "cause" disease is about as correct as saying that arsenic doesn't kill you. Of course there is a small chance that a given person will survive a dose of arsenic, but the point is that taking arsenic makes death a near-certainty - and when it happens, arsenic can be isolated as the cause. Similarly, smoking, while not always as immediately deadly (a good thing for the tobacco companies), kills people. That's not to say that smoking is NEVER immediately deadly - and I must reiterate here that a single exposure to even secondhand smoke can cause cancer. It is not merely a contributing factor. And even if it was, it is not a minor problem - one in five US citizens is killed by smoking (. http://www.cdc.gov...). That means the coroner has actually gone through on one in five dead bodies and said "no, this is not a case of death by old age or anything else - smoking is responsible for this person's death. " The same thing can be proven with statistics, as I have explained in previous rounds and my opponent has ignored. Even if smoking did not kill you, however, the fact that smokers get sick all the time is bad enough. In the USA the cost to the healthcare system alone is $35 for each pack of cigarettes smoked (. http://www.tobaccoatlas.org...), which last I checked is around double the total price of such a pack, let alone the tax revenue. The 10 years figure pro cites is misleading because it's an average. This average is naturally pulled down by much younger people than those in their 70s getting diseases. This cost has been downplayed by my opponent as borne by smokers also - bear in mind that the $35 is a marginal figure (so that's how much MORE expensive they are than me per pack that they smoke), and relates only to direct costs (the indirect costs are much bigger). At no point has my opponent really engaged with any of this. Answering my opponent's new argument about insurance, I agree that it is good that it is covered by the government, but that's because governments must take responsibility for the health of their people. It's an unjustified standard to say that governments should not intervene when the person is (somewhat) healthy but must intervene if they are sick. Pro has also attempted to downplay the harms to the rest of society. At one point he even tried to tell you it's a benefit, such as to jobs and to tax revenue. I dealt with those points and my opponent fails to defend them or extend them in this round, although he does continue to assert them. The harm that I've been pushing is the breakdown of community and family. Pro responded first by saying that a ban in public places is enough. First, a ban in public places is still a ban on cigarettes. If you agree they're good to ban to keep out of the community, then perhaps pro can finally engage with my point that sometimes others from the community actually need to be around the smoker when not in public. I should add that most countries around the world do not currently have such a ban in place. Secondly, pro argued that there are more civil mechanisms for dealing with this. Imagine you are a 4 year old and both your parents are smokers. You get glue ear. Tell me, how is this preventable? Even though it's idealistic that everybody could simply be talked out of smoking by a concerned family member, that isn't what happens - nor is it only family who are affected. I may be able to forgive somebody who tries to kill me, but at least I would expect them to stop.2) Can smoking benefit anyone? If there was ever a situation in which smoking was justified, you can bet my opponent would have said it three rounds ago. I explained why people start (coolness) and why people continue (addiction). Even if smoking is not banned for the same reasons as suicide pills are usually banned, smoking should be banned for chemically altering the brain to make the smoker want to smoke - effectively taking away their ability to choose (weaker nicotine does not mean less health harms, although the effect on addictiveness is still being studied). My opponent cannot keep asserting that support is available for smokers. Even among smokers who do eventually quit - given all the support that pro mentions - they have to try an average of around five times before they succeed in quitting. Walking into a store may be rational, but buying cigarettes is not - it is irrational to want to quit smoking and buy cigarettes, and yet 70% of smokers do. It is true that other illegal drugs are also addictive, but that's why they're illegal - and smoking should be too. If obesity was a consumer product, then I'd be in favor of banning that too, although it's somewhat less justifiable given that at least there is some benefit to eating. Such risks might be acceptable if there was a legitimate reward. In this debate, not only has my opponent not provided one, I've also proven that there isn't one. He just keeps asserting that it's "beyond doubt" that it's enjoyable, although his reasoning is apparently a bit of a secret. If this is so, then why do they want to quit? I've provided far more detailed analysis as to what's really going on that also happens to actually fit the data. The simple fact remains: tobacco is the most harmful product we have. It kills more people than all the other drugs.3) Is banning the correct response? Governments are faced with a situation where their people are suffering under the shackles of the most deadly of the immediate threats to mankind. My contention is that when the people, supposedly in a free society, are by an overwhelming majority - both of users and non-users - unwilling to be enslaved or murdered by a torturous and horrible drug that has already claimed the lives of so many, and where this drug has failed to show any real benefit to society, however small, then the government is entirely justified in declaring that is never something they will support, regardless of how much the cigarette lobby lines their pockets with cash. I told you governments exist to limit our liberty when there is grave harm. Pro agrees with me. Society can attempt to navigate these problems without intervention like my opponent suggests, but they've been trying that for a century. Our death rate is still too high, and still too much of that is preventable. If a person was to pump tar into another person's lungs and radioactive polonium into their throat then they'd be thrown into jail for life or executed, but when a consumer product does that, then pro says governments should allow it. I think that's crazy. The harm of cigarettes is way out of proportion to the harms of everything else. Why should smoking be symbolised as wrong? Because it is wrong. There's nothing right about poisoning yourself, poisoning your friends, wasting your money (with little to no benefit to the economy or jobs as I have shown), wasting everybody else's hard-earned money, killing your own children, dividing your community - and that's not even the beginning of it! So basically, if smoking is bad for you, given that there is no good to outweigh the bad, it must be banned. I look forward to the final round.