So it must boil down to the addiction aspect. Liberals who wished to be demonstrably illiberal when it comes to what they will allow adults to do or not do, made quite a spectacle of dragging the CEOs of the major American cigarette manufacturers before them to recite singly and in chorus that they did not believe their product to be addictive. Subsequent documentation suggests that they believed differently on the basis of their own independent testing, but the government had its own tests. When Bob Dole repeated this point of view, he was soundly criticized and even ridiculed, but he was at least as correct as those who condemn tobacco as addictive. It really is a matter of semantics, definitions, and politics.
Many smokers put their cigarettes down one day and never look back.
Others repeatedly try to quit, many needing to do so because of fatal illnesses, and are simply unable to stop. Smoking is fatal to some, yet not to others. Not all cancer patients smoked or lived with smokers. Common sense suggests at worst, tobacco may be addictive for some and not for others. None of which squares with the often graphic descriptions of the symptoms of drug withdrawal of true drug addicts provided in those same health classes.