I wonder if you're getting downvotes because people think you're serious. Everyone who prides themselves on not smoking loves a chance to get a little classist dig at those who do.

Smokes ain't expensive because of the cost of tobacco, though. They're expensive because, like most vices, the demand is highly inelastic and governments can tax the hell out of them without pissing off anyone who matters (once the gentry and the middle class have been conditioned not to smoke - prior to that, they were handed out as rations).

I love smoking, and ideally all those taxes I pay would be going toward cancer research and health care subsidies, but in reality they just go to the budgets of nonprofits and a class of people whose job is to further ostracize anyone who enjoys tobacco.

Those taxes you pay are entirely about encouraging you and everyone else to smoke less, and it's one of a few interventions that supported by evidence.

The government has been intentionally making tobacco expensive for a generation or more.

They regulated all the supplies to grow tobacco, making it all but impossible to profitably grow in the US. Then they added a bunch of tariffs on both supply and tobacco. Then they tax the hell out of the final product.

Cigarettes are super cheap without government interference

The tariffs on French and Spanish imports really sucked. The day Gauloises and Gitanes disappeared from the US was dark. I would pay $50 a pouch for that stuff if I could obtain it anywhere. I never come back from Europe without the maximum I'm allowed to bring in.

If only they did that for sugar

The US does have fairly steep tariffs on imported sugar. And subsidises domestic corn production. Hence why high-fructose corn syrup is found in nearly everything!