Smoking Ban

Thank you TN05 for a clean constructive round.My opponent's points boil down to the following:1 - Cigar smoking and cigarette smoking are not the same2 - A smoking helps the economy - contention ll is just the necessarily implied converse of contention l.3 - A smoking ban is unenforcable4 - Ban unnecessaryCounter 1 - CigarsI apologize for misinterpreting my opponent's PM'd proposition of the resolution. I literally thought, at the time he proposed it, that cigars and cigarettes were the same thing, so I didn't make note of it in my previous round. Again, my most sincere apologies.My opponent's basic premise here is that cigars can be used in a manner other than being smoked, but cigars and cigarettes are built with exactly the same ingredients and with the exact same mechanism. Cigars are literally just cigarettes wrapped in tobacco leaves instead of the usual paper[1]. Any form of tobacco intake via cigars can and are the same as tobacco intake via cigarettes. A cigar's tobacco leaf wrapping gives it the potential to being enjoyed like chewing tobacco, but chewing tobacco is not smoked and does not cause the same problems. In fact, cigars are often inhaled, defeating my opponent's attempted dichotomy. Ultimately, one of the most significant problems with smoked tobacco is secondhand smoke. Since 90% of tobacco intake is trapped inside the smoker's lungs and body when inhaled, Cigars, especially when taken in the way my opponent declares is less unhealthy for smokers, is a much greater hazard to the second-hand smoking victim.The fact that this debate pertains to smoking and not any other form of consumption negates the impact of the cigar's inclusion in the resolution.Counter 2 - The EconomyCounter Subpoint l - lost revenueEach year in the United States, tobacco use costs more than $289 billion a year with at least $133 billion in direct medical care for adults and more than $156 dollars in lost productivity.[3]Crunching the numbers: ($48 billion dollar tax revenue) - ($289 billion from death, medical care and lost work-time) = -$241 billion. Compared to the values lost through medical care and workplace productivity (dead people, hospitalized people, time spent not wokring, etc.), the lost tax revenue isn't even worth mentioning.Counter Subpoint ll - Tobacco Farmers"Tobacco use is the single most preventable cause of disease, disability, and death in the United States. Each year, an estimated 443,000 people die prematurely from smoking or exposure to secondhand smoke, and another 8.6 million live with a serious illness caused by smoking."[4]If we were to take an objective measure and consider Tobacco farmers as merely lives: Weighed against the millions of people whosuffer and die, the 660,000 jobs aren't even measurably comparable. If the point of having a job is to sustain life, the job's destroying even more life completely defeats the purpose of occupation. The impact of economic benefit produced by tobacco products is severely outweighed by the impact of human and economic casualties that these products causes. This refutation applies to my opponent's contention ll. Why should society suffer, why should millions needlessly die for the sake of a couple businesses? I ask my opponent and the audience: what is the point of having a business if the business helps to produce more harm than benefit to society?Counter Subpoint lll - Deaths are good for the Economy By supporting this subpoint, my opponent must then also locially support the notion that murder is good for the economy. The fact is, this subpoint isn't even true. An economy requires workers to keep it functioning. Dead people can't work and labor is a very important resource. While it costs money to sustain a person's life, the average person produces more labor value than it is worth. A dead smoker is worth infinitely less than a live worker.Just because something is profitable, doesn't mean it is right.I've been noticing a lot of 'Good for economy' arguments on some of the most ridiculous topics based solely from the fact that the topic under discussion includes items that can derive profit. It's about time these are properly addressed. The economy is not an end-all objective. I assert that the purpose of a better economy is to benefit humanity and society. If we sacrifice humanity in order to produce a better economy, we've defeated the point of having a good economy in the first place. Slavery is probably the most profitable human capitalist ventures in the world. It is also one of the most degrading: taking away human lives and freedom.Organ harvesting is profitable. Under the same argument via economy, my opponent may as well be supporting mass compulsory organ harvesting. The price of individual organs can range as high as $300,000[2] with a relatively high demand.Anything that induces profit such as war, weapons of mass destruction, slavery, etc., can fall under the category of being economically beneficial, but again, the economy is not the end objective.So what if the U.S. government receives tax revenue? This tax revenue is derived as a portion of the money spent by citizens, whose addiction compels them to throw their money away. Sure the U.S. government earns some money from this area, but the majority of the money remains in the pockets of the tobacco company. This money is taken directly from the pockets of citizens rich and poor. There's a net benefit for those who earn the money, especially those who own the companies, but a huge net loss for the consumers.Even if the numbers had come out economically positive (which it does not), smoking still kills millions of people every year while enslaving the minds of millions more to addiction. These alone are sufficient conditions to merit a ban.Counter 3 - Unenforceable BanCounter Subpoint l - Too Many SmokersThe purpose of a ban isn't to stop every single smoker from smoking overnight. The purpose is to societally deter it.Laws are broken every day. The existence of law breakers does not invalidate the legitimacy of a law. A smoking ban affects more than just smokers, it is also tailored to potential smokers. At the end of the day, the majority of citizens will generally abide by the law. A ban on smoking would most likely cause a large portion of smokers to stop while also deterring another portion from engaging in the activity in the first place. The logic which applies to some of the worst drugs also applies here. A ban won't be completely comprehensive, but it's a first and necessary step.$50 billion in the government does not compare to the $300 billion lost. The government is not obligated to earn money at the cost of so many human lives and workers' wages.. nor are we obligated to allow the government to do so. Counter Subpoint ll - Failed BanPast-month usage is not indicative of habit. A legal deterrent will significantly reduce supply and thus the ability to sustain habit.My opponent cites illegal drug use as a failure to drug bans. While a drug ban does not necessarily stop illegal markets, it will stop legal markets. No more advertising (tobacco companies spend nearly $10 billion dollars in a year on advertising[6]). Decreased promotion means decreased incumbency. The supply of illegal production will always just be a fraction of the supply of legal production.The U.S. produces 22.3 million pounds of marijuana[8], the most commonly used illegal drugs (making up a majority of my opponent's 23.9 million past-month use statistic), in a year.In the same year, the U.S. produced nearly 800 million pounds of tobacco[10]That's 3400% more tobacco than marijuana produced, and that's not even counting the fact that a large quantity of this marijuana goes toward medical usage.Illegal drugs may not completely escape public consumption, but their illegality severely cuts into the quantity of consumption. A ban won't stop everyone from smoking. I don't make that claim. I assert that a ban would stop a majority from developing smoking habits. Counter 4 - Unnecessary BanWhile smoking has been declining, it's still prevalent among an immense populace. We can sit and wait for smoking's slow decline, allowing hundreds of thousands of annual deaths, or we can immediately cut smoking's toxic influence on society with a ban. Every life matters. Every life saved counts. A ban on smoking will help millions of people. Declining rates of murder doesn't make murder prohibition any less viable. Declining usage does not make usage give usage legitimacy. That's quack logic.Conclusion - Why Smoking should be Banned!Smoking is severely damaging to our economy, severely outweighing any economic benefits it might provide.Encouraging smoking is a utilitarian immorality, costing us countless millions of lives.Smoking destroys free will - enslaving a person's mind to nicotine addiction.Smoking is a major health hazard.A smoking ban will deter addiction and addiction incumbents. Less accessibility = less accessed. While this doesn't mean all smoking will be stopped, a lot of it will be. Every actual and potential smoking addict from now and in the future who are deterred from smoking is a life saved from unnecessary, premature death.There is no point to sustaining an objectively useless and harmful habit. Humanity doesn't need smoking.Sources[1] http://www.diffen.com...[2] http://www.havocscope.com...[3] http://www.cdc.gov...[4] http://www.cdc.gov...[5] http://en.wikipedia.org...[6] http://www.cdc.gov...[7] http://www.drugfreeworld.org...[8] http://www.drugscience.org...[9] http://www.drugfreeworld.org...[10] http://www.tobaccoinaustralia.org.au...