Maybe but I'm more concerned about a) easily demonstrable and measurable risks not being addressed and b) separating people from the consequences of their own choices.
Ignoring risk and consequences doesn't make them go away.
Ignoring risk and consequences doesn't make them go away.
To put it into more technical, economic terms: why should the individual tobacco consumer bear the full cost of their externalities while the tobacco company does not?
Because people are well aware that smoking is dangerous and can freely choose to smoke or not.
Actually it's much worse than that. The tobacco company is not just selling tobacco products, it's marketing them and actively encouraging their use!
How would that even work? Any such tax would be priced in into the price of the product. It doesn’t really matter if the government is collecting it directly or through the tobacco companies.
Or if we wanted tobacco companies to pay for all the damage they did retroactively they would just go bankrupt, since they don’t have even remotely enough cash/assets to cover it.
The entire system only works if healthy 30 year olds are putting in somewhat similarly (it will be cheaper regardless). Insurance is based on the idea of spreading risk. Without it insurance cannot function.