Cigarets Should Be Illegal.

DEATHSI just want to make this point very, very clear.As Proctor states [3]:"The cigarette is the deadliest object in the history of human civilisation. Cigarettes kill about 6 million people every year, a number that will grow before it shrinks. ... [A] billion could perish in our century unless we reverse course. Even if present rates of consumption drop steadily to zero by 2100, we will still have about 300 million tobacco deaths this century."Consider that: 1,000,000,000 dead people. Most estimates of nuclear war put the deathtoll at maybe 500,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 dead people. Stopping cigarette consumption is equivalent to preventing a nuclear war.REDUCING SMOKINGConsider that smokefree policies have reduced smoking, even though they're limited to just the premises of a building [1][2]. If smokefree policies work at a local level, why shouldn't they work at a larger level?LIBERTYAs Proctor states [3]:"The primary reason for abolition, however, is that smokers themselves dislike the fact they smoke. Smoking is not a recreational drug, and abolishing cigarettes would therefore enlarge rather than restrict human liberties. Abolition would also help cigarette makers fulfil their repeated promises to ‘cease production’ if cigarettes were ever found to be causing harm. .... The freedom objection is weak, however, given how people actually experience addiction. Most smokers ‘enjoy’ smoking only in the sense that it relieves the pains of withdrawal; they need nicotine to feel normal. People who say they enjoy cigarettes are rather rare—so rare that the industry used to call them ‘enjoyers’. Surveys show that most smokers want to quit but cannot; they also regret having started. Tobacco industry executives have long grasped the point: Imperial Tobacco's Robert Bexon in 1984 confided to his Canadian cotobacconists that ‘If our product was not addictive we would not sell a cigarette next week’. American cigarette makers have been quietly celebrating addiction since the 1950s, when one expressed how ‘fortunate for us’ it was that cigarettes ‘are a habit they can't break’. Cigarette smoking itself, though, is less an expression of freedom than the robbery of it. And so long as we allow the companies to cast themselves as defenders of liberty, the table is unfairly tilted. We have to recognise that smoking compromises freedom, and that retiring cigarettes would enlarge human liberties."A ban helps smokers quit; most smokers *want* to quit. We thus both increase liberty and prevent harm at the same time.CRIME & ILLEGAL SMOKINGAs Proctor states [3]:"Another objection commonly raised to any call for a ban is that this will encourage smuggling, or even organised crime. But that is rather like blaming theft on fat wallets. Smuggling is already rampant in the cigarette world, as a result of pricing disparities and the tolerance of contraband or even its encouragement by cigarette manufacturers. Luk Joossens and Rob Cunningham have shown how cigarette manufacturers have used smuggling to undermine monopolies or gain entry into new markets or evade taxation. And demand for contraband should diminish, once the addicted overcome their addiction—a situation very different from prohibition of alcohol, where drinking was a more recreational drug. And of course, even a ban on the sale of cigarettes will not eliminate all smoking—nor should that be our goal, since people should still be free to grow their own for personal use. Possession should not be criminalised; the goal should only be a ban on sales. Enforcement, therefore, should be a trivial matter, as is proper in a liberal society."ECONOMYCon states: "The second thing is the economy would go down. They would give up more than 150 billion dollars which is a lot. So we would not be in the best state. Sorry for this being so short."As Proctor states [3]:"Apart from reducing human suffering, abolishing the sale of cigarettes would result in savings in the realm of healthcare costs, increased labour productivity, lessened harms from fires, reduced consumption of scarce physical resources, and a smaller global carbon footprint. Abolition would ... effectively eliminate one of the historical forces behind global warming denial and environmental obfuscation."Ending cigarette consumption is literally better than ending war, in terms of lives and money saved.As the New South Wales Dept. of Health states:Cigarette smoking costs "$2.9408" billion dollars in New South Wales, population 7.439 million. If we assume constant levels of cost across the world, then smoking would cost roughly 2.9 *trillion* dollars, per year.It's worth the tiny loss of profit, because of the gains from health, productivity, and elsewhere.[1] http://www.cdc.gov...[2] http://www.tobaccofreekids.org...[3] http://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com...[4] http://www.health.nsw.gov.au...