I try to look at the tobacco situation by analogy to make some sense of
it. One similar set of products would be alcohol. We know alcohol is a
poison. We know alcohol impairs judgement and co-ordination. We know
alcohol can be addictive, at least psychologically. Not all of the
down-sides of alcohol have always been known, or well known. On the
other side, in moderation, many people enjoy and approve of consuming
alcohol, and more importantly, the prohibition years and the rise of
organized crime taught us some lessons about what happens when alcohol
is made illegal.

Another issue worth considering is based on known effects, and a good
analogy is the old X-Ray Shoe Fitting machines [1], sometimes called
"Fluoroscopes" or "Pedoscopes". When their use started in the 20's and
30's, most people simply did not know about the dangers of radiation
exposure. Similar harm was done with most situation involving radiation,
including nuclear weapons testing and medical evaluations, up until the
1970's when the dangers of radiation exposure started becoming better
known.

The history of asbestos use and harm is another useful analogy. The use
of asbestos was very wide-spread, but it took a long time for the
general populace to become aware of the harm. Similar could be said for
the use of lead in paint, and many other things.

Tobacco is a more dubious case due to profit motives leading the tobacco
industry to actively promote known-harmful products, and actively deceive
the populace to hide the harm of their products. Unlike alcohol,
nicotine is physically addictive, and the tobacco industry has quite
intentionally made their products more addictive. The more non-industry
research that gets done on how addictive tobacco products really are,
the worse the problem looks. It's hellishly difficult to quit, and
worse, the modified tobacco products which are geared towards addiction
make breaking the habit even more difficult.

A new complete prohibition against tobacco would most likely fare about
as well as the past complete prohibitions against alcohol and cannabis,
namely, leading to the rise of a black market, increased incarceration,
and violent organized crime. The current approach to decrease the use of
known-harmful products is to increase taxation, typically called "Vice
Taxes." Unfortunately, this approach mostly fails to deter use, and the
profit motives of the industries still exist.

Since vice taxes and other restrictive laws have failed to put an end to
the tobacco industry or the harm it causes, the result as seen in this
punitive award of $23B is similar to the history of punitive awards
against the asbestos industry. At present, one of the most valuable
search terms on Google is "Mesothelioma" and these days, you can't watch
TV without seeing advertisements for law firms specializing in asbestos
related Mesothelioma cases. If the same trajectory continues, then the
tobacco industry will become unprofitable due to punitive damages
awarded due to the harm caused by their products. In other words, the
massive punitive damages awards are an attempt to destroy the profit
motives of an industry selling harmful products, and hence put an end to
the industry itself.

The only thing that hasn't been tried yet with the tobacco problem is
the same type of "sales prohibition" that have been levied against the
asbestos industry. At present it's still legal to own asbestos, and mine
asbestos, but selling asbestos is extremely difficult due to laws
preventing its sale for just about every known purpose. If more
wide-spread "sales prohibitions" were enacted to prevent most or even
all sales of tobacco products, beyond the existing prohibitions against
sales to minors, the harm of tobacco products would be a mostly solved
problem since it would prevent the industry from being profitable.

Though it will take many more years, many more laws, and many more
multi-billion dollar punitive rewards, we are watching the slow motion
train wreck of a harmful industry dying. Whether you consider the end of
a harmful industry to be a good or bad thing is your personal choice,
but the harm is no longer debatable so it seems the end is nigh.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope