I think if you look a little you'll find that plenty of families have been 'destroyed' by the effects of tobacco.

And families being destroyed by alcohol is almost a stereotype.

How so? In the sense that the smoker is all messed up in the hospital bringing pain to his relatives, sure.

But I don't think people sell their mom's furniture to buy marlboro, and haven't seen moms chaining their kids to their beds to stop them from going out smoking.

I suppose it depends on your definition of 'destroyed', then. Personally, any kid of mine who I would consider chaining to a bed would be in rehab without a second thought -- on the other hand, smoking seems so innocuous that before you know it they're dying of lung cancer and you can't do anything about it...

They aren't really comparable, if you ask me -- I get your point. All I'm saying is that some people can recreationally use all kinds of drugs (alcohol, meth, crack, whatever) and others can't. Smoking will just straight up kill you. So IMO, in terms of 'damage to society' smoking is way further up there than most illegal drugs.