Just tax them. Countries are already doing that.
Why do we need to ban them? If people want to smoke them, let them. The tax can take care of externalities.
(And I say that as someone who hates smoking.)
Why do we need to ban them? If people want to smoke them, let them. The tax can take care of externalities.
(And I say that as someone who hates smoking.)
Alcohol appears to be going in the same direction.
Honestly, I dislike smoking as much as anyone else but I frankly oppose the way Australia is taxing cigarettes and alcohol. These are sin taxes. They are high to deter people from doing things they want to do. That's overreach.
Taxes should aim to cover externalities. That's fair. Your choice forces a burden on the collectivity which it's trying to recoup. Above that, that's just coercion and paternalism. Plus it disproportionally affects the poor but I guess the moral police pushing for this kind of taxes sees that as a benefit.
Even if you have the most addictive substance on the planet, the black market puts an upper bound on how much you can tax it.
The taxation level that maximizes revenue or minimizes harmful noncompliance never satisfies the moralizing people who wanted the thing you're discussing (whatever it is) punitively taxed in the first place.
Externalities also depend on context. Eg your example of cheaper healthcare only works when healthcare is priced by pooling payments. If you have a system where an actuary looks at each case individually (well, a system designed by an actuary does) and assigns a premium, then it doesn't matter what other people are doing: you are paying for your own risk (and competition between insurance providers keeps the system honest).
See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prize_indemnity_insurance for a corner of that insurance market that works on the latter system.
Even if you insist on pooling, you could pool smokers and non-smokers separately.
Granted in many places regulations force health insurance providers to do the naive pooling where your statement can be true. Similar, or even more so, for pensions.