Smoking prevention has been going well for decades. This graph[1] shows a consistent year-over-year decline in adult per capita cigarette consumption since about 1970, bringing it to around a quarter of its peak level in the 1960s. I had more trouble finding good graphs for teenagers, but it looks like teen smoking had a resurgence in the 1990s and has been in decline since then, with a sharp rise in vaping in recent years. (See Figure 2 here[2].)

Before e-cigarettes came along, it sure looked like the United States was well on its way to eliminating tobacco smoking altogether.

[1] https://kottke.org/14/07/the-rise-and-fall-of-american-smoki...

[2] https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/su/su6901a7.htm

Why eliminate smoking entirely? Some people want to smoke and that should be their business. The risks of smoking have been known for decades and some people accept those risks because they enjoy it. Instead of harassing them, how about we accept that personal freedom means that some people won't always make the choices you would like.

Smoking, at anything like the scale it currently happens, is not in any way a deliberate, rational acceptance of risk vs. reward. Almost all smokers start smoking when they are teenagers (i.e. children), when their brains are not fully developed. Nicotine is highly addictive, which makes it very difficult to later make a rational decision to stop. And teenagers who do start smoking do not do so as individuals in a vacuum, they do so with other teenagers due to peer pressure and other social factors.

Marketing a highly-addictive carcinogen to children is not about "personal freedom".

Your argument boils down to "think of the children" which I do not find compelling. I can rationalize taking all kinds of things away from people with that logic.

You're setting up a straw man for yourself to knock down; the points they're making are more nuanced than just 'think of the children' and you're being excessively reductive when you frame it that way.

Make another argument then. There are lots of ways to protect children without limiting the liberty of consenting adults.

So tell that to my stepmom that made me sit in a car when I was 13 years old with the windows rolled up while she chain smoked on a 2 hour drive because she was on the phone and couldn't hear with the windows down. Despite my protests...

Your freedoms end where mine begin. If you want to smoke, fine. Do it in a location where I NEVER have to breathe it in.

My point is that "consenting adults" aren't really involved here. A "think of the children argument" is when you argue for banning something that adults do because a child might be exposed to it and might suffer harm as a result. An example would be wanting to ban porn (something for adults) because a little kid might see it and warp their fragile young mind, or whatever. The key part of this scenario is that the little kid's exposure to porn is neither intentional nor desired (on the part of porn producers) or common.

Starting smoking, on the other hand, is something that, for the most part, only children do. The entire goal of tobacco companies is to get children addicted so they'll keep buying nicotine for the rest of their lives, without any adult decision-making involved. Here are some numbers for you:

Almost 90% of people in the US who smoke tried their first cigarette before they were 18[1]. Effectively all of the rest did before they were 26 (most by 22), which is around the age where the human brain's capacity for risk assessment and long-term decision-making is fully developed. Two thirds of daily smokers started doing that by the time they were 18, and over 95% did by the time they were 26. Over a quarter of daily smokers started before they were 15. Furthermore, people who start smoking are most likely to do so with the help of their peers (i.e. other children), not adults.

The concept of rational free choice is a bit murky even under the best circumstances. When you add in addiction, it gets a lot more complicated. And when you're talking about children getting addicted, I don't think it's a helpful framework. Children are not capable of consenting to a destructive long-term addiction, and in practice, almost nobody else does.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/n/surgtobyouth/pdf/ See chapter 3, especially Table 3.2.

Your “personal freedoms” end when they cause you to become a burden on the state. If you want to smoke I’m totally fine with that as long as you agree to be banned from using any public health services ever, no Medicaid no Medicare no social security. As you said, the dangers have been known for decades, so everyone involved can make a rational decision.

When your choices cause others problems they’re no longer just “yours” and you need to consider how you’re affecting the wider society.

>Your “personal freedoms” end when they cause you to become a burden on the state.

Orwell, is that you?

>If you want to smoke I’m totally fine with that as long as you agree to be banned from using any public health services ever, no Medicaid no Medicare no social security.

This is something that people who harass and spit homeless people would say.

>As you said, the dangers have been known for decades, so everyone involved can make a rational decision.

You think drug addition is in any way rational? Wake up.

E-cigarettes can't get in the way of eliminating tobacco smoking, because they aren't tobacco and they aren't smoking.

It's the smoking that's deleterious to health. Nicotine is an addictive stimulant but if it's otherwise harmful it's very difficult to demonstrate this.

Governments only really started to care about vaping when teen smoking started to plummet. Those teens were going to become a valuable revenue stream!

Also, governments have a perverse incentive to maintain tobacco sales. There are 10x as many enforcement checks for tobacco taxes being paid as there are for underage tobacco purchases.

The less people smoke cigarettes (vapes are not part of the deal), the less the states get from the Tobacco master settlement case in 1998. There is a significant financial incentive for governments to keep people smoking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agre...

Vaping is not smoking. This should be obvious, but you apparently are totally unaware that vaping is not smoking.

Oh, give me a break. It's nicotine, it's inhaled, it's made by corporations who market it to children so they'll become addicted before their brains finish developing. Vaping might do less damage to the lungs, but aside from that the problematic parts are the same.

That depends where. Here in the UK, cigarettes cannot be marketed at all. To kids or adults. That seems like a sensible middle ground to me. Allow the product to be sold, but don't allow advertising that pushes people into buying it.

I feel like abstinence campaigns work somewhat better with cigarettes than sex/alcohol because cigarettes are legitimately bad for you, and many users of cigarettes genuinely regret taking up smoking (whereas barely anyone will tell you they regret drinking or having sex).

Drinking significantly increases your risk of certain cancers. While smoking is more of a cancer risk, drinking inhibits judgement and can lead to all sort of issues in addition to cancer risk - drunk driving, violence, etc. In short, alcohol is legitimatly bad for you.

https://www.icr.ac.uk/blogs/science-talk/page-details/when-i...

Yes, it is. Alcohol shouldn't be allowed to be marketed either.

> Cigarettes are directly marketed to kids

Can you provide a recent example of cigarettes being marketed to kids in USA?

Not in the US, but "Winners Don't Quit" is a tobacco company marketing campaign from 2019 on.