It's Time To Ban Tobacco

“We don’t smoke that s***. We just sell it. We just reserve the right to smoke for the young, the poor, the black and the stupid.” — RJ Reynolds Executive, asked why he doesn't smoke, 1992

So, what did he sell, exactly? An addictive carcinogen, simply put. That carcinogen, the CDC estimates, causes 480,000 deaths in the United States yearly, 7 million worldwide yearly deaths and some 20,000 worldwide daily deaths. It remains the most obvious and prevalent risk factor for hosts of diseases, including cancer.

Some will, invariably, retort that I am fearmongering. Smoking rates have declined, in large part due to excise taxes, public smoking restrictions and changing social attitudes. They will point to fanciful graphs, arranged with neat little colors set along nice best fit lines, and cry “progress!” They will calculate the slopes of those best-fit lines and wave them in my face. “Look—our m value is negative! Reform works.” And so they will miss the entire point. 

As a person who has had close family members die of smoking-related illnesses, I can only begin to express how unsatisfactory this “progress” is. Forward progress is no consolation to the nine year-old child sitting at a parent’s deathbed, wondering why his mother had to die. He won’t find out the real reason for years later. He will, in due time, learn that it was all part of a plan, that his mother was one of “the young, the poor, the black, or the stupid” chosen by a corporate conglomerate whose profit model depends on hooking people to lethal substances. He will find out that the red bandana she wore was a marker of a blight she never asked for, but that was very deliberately thrust upon her. And, in a matter of a few years, he will realize that none of this had to happen.

Tobacco companies are responsible for killing millions every year, then. They’ve attempted to exert influence over entire governments, especially in the developing world, often at prohibitive costs to anti-tobacco activists. They’ve spent decades cherry-picking studies and downplaying the scientific consensus on smoking—we’ve already seen lobbyists gearing up for another fight on vaping. So, we shouldn’t pretend that we aren’t aware of the problem, because we know exactly what it is. Perhaps, I should refer to the problems, pluralized: Philip Morris International, British American Tobacco, Imperial Brands, Japan Tobacco International and China Tobacco—together the “big five” tobacco companies.

So, if any other corporate practice were responsible by design for addiction to a lethal substance and deaths of millions per year, what would we do? We would ban it, and we would lock its purveyors in jail for criminal negligence. I just really can’t see any other way. So, it would seem that the real policy solution would be a full ban on the sale of tobacco. Mind you, not the consumption—no one should be jailed for an addiction. 

And out of the woodwork comes another round of opponents. These ones aren’t quite the types to shove graphs in your face, at least. They are evocative of the “great” spirit of the Marlboro Man, annoyed by any attempt to force solutions down their throats. They proudly live life on the edge and demand the “right” to smoke (without perhaps knowing who was intended to share among that right). Of course, these people just simply aren’t in touch with the real sufferings of smokers—some 68% of smokers wanted to quit, the CDC reports, and some 55% had made a recent attempt to quit.

And here, too, fall those who shudder at the thought of repeating Prohibition. Unlike alcoholics, the majority of smokers want to quit. Many of them have also indicated an openness to quitting if presented with the opportunity. Now, Prohibition’s failure can be partially traced back to a failure to address the underlying social problems that cause drunkenness and alcohol addiction. I do not presume to make the same mistakes of the past—we should absolutely provide tremendous assistance to those overcoming addiction. But we also shouldn’t pretend that the two situations are analogous, because they simply aren’t.

Small-scale policies to restrict smoking itself have thus far yielded some dividends. The CDC and WHO have publicly praised the efficacy of smoke-free zones on several occasions, and foreign attempts to keep tobacco off the shelves seem to be yielding dividends.

Further, there is a moral issue at hand. Perhaps, if I am being honest, a degree of selfishness is involved here as well. Listening to the clip in Dr. Lilly’s slideshow, I could hardly hold back a sea of expletives, the likes of which this Assembly Hall has probably never seen before. There is something so disgusting and criminal about Big Tobacco that we ought to do everything in our power to stop it. And even if I was wrong, even if a ban were to be entirely ineffective, an utter waste of time, we could at least say we took a stance.