Some states expel teens from school, deny drivers' licenses, impose fines and even jail youths. North Carolina imposes some of the most severe penalties. However, in three cities, Billings, Livingston, and Missoula, where city councils had implemented local ordinances to criminalize teen smoking, students were significantly less likely to vote for the referendum than would have been predicted by the smoking rates. Just because targeting teens doesn't work doesn't mean we can't have a smoke-free society. This was the explicit goal of Reagan's surgeon general, C. Everett Koop, who targeted smoking in public places and relentlessly used his position as a pulpit from which to warn people of diseases associated with smoking.
Higher costs means lower smoking.
New taxes mean the states would lose big time. One answer is tobacco money. Tobacco lobbyists poured millions into the Democratic Party. This is the same guy who, four years after his sister's death, bragged in the 1988 presidential primaries that he had been a tobacco farmer himself, and who profited from growing the killer weed well into the 1990s. Another answer as to why the focus has been narrowed to teens involves the coopting of the anti-smoking movement.