Look at the numbers... Of drug-caused deaths, 82% are due to tobacco, 16% are due to alcohol (including road crash fatalities) and 2% are due to illicit drugs (including narcotics, cannabis, hallucinogens, stimulants and non-prescribed tranquilizers).

The mega-industry built around tobacco exerts substantial political influence (i.e. campaign contributions). My home state of Virginia has successfully resisted most efforts to restrict smoking, echoing the same five words, "Philip Morris opposes this measure." Tobacco built this state, and evidently still runs it.

Tobacco taxes profit governments the world over alongside tobacco companies, who can therefore be seen as complicit in the massive damage caused by tobacco use. 

With another mega-industry fuelled by the annual $40 billion "War on Drugs" to address the illicit drug-related 2% of fatalities, it would seem a more proportionate effort should apply to eliminating tobacco's 82% and alcohol's 16%. 

If the purpose of law is to protect us from others, and from ourselves, then where is the protection against tobacco use? Let's fight the real enemy. Let's get our priorities straight. Let's stop the hypocrisy and institutionalized corruption. 

Social Aspects

Economic and Societal Aspects

Smoking creates a terrible burden to society. Ultimately it's others who must pick up the tab to try to fix the damage smokers cause themselves, either through higher insurance premiums or through the drain upon the taxpayers' purse.  All those smoke breaks smokers need to go outside to take several times each day?  EPA reports smokers are absent from their jobs 50% more often than non-smokers. That's adds up to substantial productivity lost.

Surgeons and doctors in Melbourne, Australia (where medical care is state-provided)are demanding that smokers kick the habit before getting certain elective surgeries. "We have a very strict policy that we do not offer lung transplants to people who smoke or have any other substance abuse in the last six months," said one surgeon. "Why should taxpayers pay for it," said another. "It's consuming resources for someone who is contributing to their own demise."

Based on a worldwide study of smoking-related fire and disaster data, UC-Davis epidemiologists show smoking is a leading cause of fires and death from fires globally, costing many billions of dollars annually. The study's highlights:

Fires cause 1% of the global burden of disease and 300,000 deaths per year worldwide. Smoking causes an estimated 30% of fire deaths in the U.S. and 10% of fire deaths worldwide. Each year, over 1 billion smokers throughout the world light over 6 trillion cigarettes, creating a potential source of ignition from cigarette butts, and from cigarette lighters and matches that fall into the hands of young children.

Some 2 million fires occur each year in the United States alone. These fires result in about 5,000 deaths, 54,000 hospitalizations and 1.4 million injuries. The overall cost of fire in the U.S., which has been estimated at up to $200 billion a year, represents 1-2% of the U.S. GDP. Of these U.S. fires, children under the age of 10 with access to cigarette lighters and matches cause about 100,000 fires, 300 to 400 child deaths, and 11% of all injuries in reported fires each year. Globally, cigarette lights cause an estimated 1 million fires started by children.

A few historical examples:

• In France, a single lighted cigarette thrown from a moving car in 1999 ignited a fire in the Mont Blanc Tunnel, a major thoroughfare between France and Italy, causing 39 deaths and over $1 billion in losses to the region.
  
  
• The 1991 Oakland Hills firestorm in California, in which a lit cigarette remains a suspected cause, left 10,000 homeless, destroyed nearly 4,000 dwellings and cost more than $1.5 billion.
  
  
• And in Texas City, Texas, the FBI blamed a cigarette for probably igniting an ammonium nitrate explosion in 1947, causing the worst industrial disaster death toll in U.S. history. The explosion caused nearly 600 deaths, 380 hospitalizations longer than two months, 4,100 casualties, and damage to more than 90% of the city's buildings at a cost of more than $4 billion.

Health and Medical Aspects

"Every 10 seconds, someone dies from tobacco use, says the World Health Organization. Medical research suggests that those who start smoking in their teens (as 90% of smokers do) and continue for 2 decades or more will die 20-25 years earlier than those who never light up. And there's growing evidence that it's not always lung cancer or heart disease that kills them. Below, some of smoking's less publicized side-effects -- from head to toe."

1. Hair loss
2. Cataracts
3. Wrinkling
4. Hearing loss
5. Skin cancer
6. Tooth decay
7. Lung ailments
8. Osteoporosis
9. Heart disease
10. Stomach ulcers
11. Discolored fingers
12. Cervical cancer
13. Deformed sperm
14. Psoriasis
15. Buerger's Disease
16. Cancer