We should provide economic incentives for people to stop smoking while putting in place severe economic penalties for those who continue to smoke. That's the smarter way to keep individual liberty intact while encouraging consumers to take responsibility for their own behaviors. Education programs combined with appropriately-structured economic incentives will drive millions of Americans away from cigarettes without taking away consumer freedoms.
The other option: Turn smokers into criminals and double the prison population...
Of course, the FDA could just ban cigarettes altogether, but that would create a new kind of tobacco Prohibition situation where people who light up a cigarette are considered criminals, arrested, and locked away in prisons that are already overcrowded with other non-violent offenders (like people who harmlessly smoked a little weed, which is already illegal...)Today's War on Drugs has been a complete disaster. If we launch a War on Tobacco, we'll just turn the U.S. into an anti-tobacco police state and fills the prisons with people whose only crime was their inability to beat a nicotine addiction.
You see, most people misunderstand the appropriate role of government in a free society. You cannot have "freedom" if you have the government running around criminalizing everything it doesn't want consumers to engage in. (In Singapore, they've banned bubble gum!) Instead, you have to use government to create economic incentives and penalties that allow free-market choice to drive consumers away from those things that are bad for them and towards those things that are good for them.
That's why we should stop subsidizing corn and sugar, by the way: It makes sugar cheaper than it should be and actually encourages consumers to buy more products made with sugar. Corn subsidies make high-fructose corn syrup artificially cheap, too, which is why you find that obesity-promiting ingredient in so many foods and beverages.
Banning cigarettes will simply not work: Addicts will find ways to smoke a little leaf, regardless of the law. And turning them into criminals does not solve the problem. Instead, you need to provide education, services and support that helps consumers get off cigarettes and onto a healthier lifestyle.
Most people who smoke, after all, would like to quit! Consumers are already trending in the right direction on this issue, and with a little help, we could get tens of millions of Americans off these cancer-causing tobacco products and onto a healthier lifestyle.
That's why creating economic policies that support the transition away from cigarettes is the best way to accomplish the goals of getting people to stop smoking.
The easiest way to do this, of course, is to raise the tax on cigarettes. Go crazy with it: Make it cost $10 a pack, and then use that money to pay for the public education ads that tell people to stop smoking.
Denying health care services to smokers is another way to create an economic penalty for smoking. But my suggestion on this is mostly satirical, since such a policy would be considered cruel and would never become law. (I maintain, however, that taxpayer dollars should not be used to fund the health care services of smokers. They should be financially responsible to pay for their own cancer treatments, heart surgeries, etc.)
A third way to stop smoking is to make it extremely inconvenient for smokers, such as banning smoking everywhere other than a smoker's own home or vehicle. This is already working in some cities, and it's good public health policy because secondhand smoke is highly toxic, too, and those of us interested in being healthy shouldn't have to breathe the toxic smoke exhaled from people who insist on puffing on cancer sticks.
With a little creativity, a government can create such strong incentives for moving away from smoking that very few consumers will persist in their smoking habits, and that will ultimately save millions of lives and billions of dollars.
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