Ban Smoking?

My essay last week talked about the ethics of a doctor refusing to continue to see patients that smoked. That got me thinking about the habit of smoking. Smokers feel they are under siege these days, with more and more laws restricting where they can smoke. Advocates for smoker's rights make much of the fact that tobacco is a legal product. But should it be?

James had it right 400 years ago, but the people who manufacture and sell tobacco products are nothing if not tenacious. For years the manufacturers denied that there were any health risks associated with smoking, but have finally come clean and said what everybody knew to be true.

Tobacco products slowly kill the user and annoys those around him or her. It provides no redeeming societal value, yet it can still be bought by anyone in convenience stores all around the world. Automobiles at least provide transportation in exchange for the pollution they produce. Although many people die in automobile accidents, the cause is almost invariably driver error. In a similar fashion, our entire industrial society provides innumerable goods and services at the cost of some waste and pollution. There are many poisonous chemicals used in industrial processes, but the manufacturers provide guidelines to transport and use them safely.

Smokers point to the failure of the 18th Amendment in the United States to eliminate alcohol consumption as evidence that banning tobacco wouldn't work. Maybe so, and maybe not. The actual amendment banned the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors . . . for beverage purposes." It was commonly understood that liquors were whiskey, rum, or other distilled spirits. The Volstead Act of 1920 defined liquors as anything with more that one half of one percent alcohol, which included beers and wines. This was going too far even for people that supported prohibition.

One can easily make a case for Prohibition as the author of many of the societal ills that haunt us today, but lets stay focussed on smoking. The essential difference between tobacco and alcohol is that the latter can easily be manufactured anywhere. Tobacco only grows in certain places, and curing it for smoking is typically not a quick process. It can be grown and cured indoors, of course, much as marijuana is now. But reducing tobacco users to the number willing to grow and harvest it would go a long way toward clearing up the problems caused by smoking.

Much as I dislike the smell of tobacco smoke, I don't favour an outright ban on it. There are still too many people that are addicted, and forcing them to go cold turkey overnight is unfair when the habit has been developed over many years. I think there is still a great deal that can be done through educational efforts to prevent people, especially children and teens, from starting to smoke in the first place. Some of the revenues from tobacco taxes should be made available to fund programs that help people quit.

Society has made it clear that driving under the influence of alcohol is not acceptable, and phased in the law changes over many years as public sentiment changed. In a similar way, we can pass laws that restrict where people smoke to protect other people that don't wish to inhale tobacco smoke. For right now, there are people favouring such legislation who argue that the lawmakers have gone too far too fast. Just as there are still a few who drive under the influence, there will always be a few people who will continue to smoke.

My solution is to treat tobacco (and marijuana, for that matter) like a prescribed drug. Available, but under controlled circumstances. The manufacture of the products should be government supervised, and all taxes paid by the manufacturer. Any vendor caught selling tobacco or alcohol products to a minor should permanently lose their business license. Manufacturers that traffic with smugglers should be put out of business.

The most important thing to do is change how we portray smoking, and smokers. From movies, advertising, and a thousand other cultural sources, smoking is viewed as cool, something a rebel or loner does. The message needs to change to "Smoking is a stupid thing to do; only losers smoke."