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> The RoI is absolutely insane

In purely financial terms, it's negative; premature deaths from tobacco (even with the health care costs of tobacco-related disease) actually significantly reduce health and net social welfare costs.

The benefit is in years and quality of life (mostly in the after-working-career years), not financial returns.

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This doesn't account for the extra value those folks will create.

Yes, it does, but most of the years lost are when people are drawing social security or similar public pensions, not economically productive; there have been numerous studies on this, and while many have raised moral arguments against acting the way tobacco companies propose (as they have actively lobbied based on them in many places in the world) based on them, there has been no serious disputes of the facts of net financial savings.

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