Obviously we can't change the past, but we came very very close to doing the next best thing: make it culturally unacceptable to smoke.
We lose out on all that all over again, except replace tobacco with candy vape juice. I guess again the genie's out of the bottle and it's too late for another few generations, but it's such a shame to me.
Addressing the point of parent's responsibility: there's no chance parenting beat an subculture of cool, let's not pretend that's possible.
The tobacco trade was hugely influential to the development of the early US colonies. If there was no demand for tobacco, the early colonist would've most likely starved as the soil was not particularly suited for food crops, but they could at least trade tobacco for food.
And like you said there's plenty of adults that are incapable of resting something which literally kills then, makes them impotent, makes them sick, etc... They even proudly proclaim that it's their right to smoke, what a sad spectacle.