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Comment by redwoolf | Hacker News Reader

Cool. I've always found these anti-smoking government actions to be disingenuous. The government runs campaigns to discourage smoking with one hand and with the other raises taxes on cigarettes. Why not just ban nicotine and tobacco products outright?

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By allowing them to settle they've ipso facto legalized any laws they were breaking for the wealthy companies.

Generating new tax revenue via overbearing nanny state actions is a 2/2 for most modern demographic societies.

I'm not opposed to tax revenue generation, but the cigarette tax is a regressive tax on a product that is harmful. In the interest of public health wouldn't it be better to eliminate tobacco?

Making it illegal won't eliminate it. Didn't go well when we tried to eliminate alcohol. War on drugs didn't eliminate drugs. Drugs are now worse than ever. You'll just end up making smokers into criminals, people will grow their own, or find someone to buy it from. Then you'll get cigarettes made illegally, which will probably end up having more dangerous shit in them than they already do now.

In my opinion, you have to have a public health system before you get to make dictums about public health, at least when it comes down to what substances you allow people to consume.

Cigarette smoking has been declining for decades and will be continue to dive as boomers die out. All of the anti cigarette campaigning has been effective.

The U.S. has banned alcohol, other drugs, etc. Still alcohol and plenty of drugs.

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