system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Tobacco use should be made Illegal.

Smoking is really bad for you. Everyone knows that, and it’s why there are manky pictures of gums and lungs on fag packets and you can’t have adverts with camels in. But, if it’s so objectively bad for you why hasn’t the government, you know, just banned it?

Tobacco smoking has no health benefits. None. It can be argued that nicotine, one of the thousands of compounds in tobacco smoke, can have positive effects on some cognitive functions and may even confer some neuroprotection, but getting nicotine from tobacco products may be likened to sucking on a tail pipe to get oxygen – it’s there but it’s not going to do you any good. Yet tobacco is legally sold in virtually every country in the world and, after decades of understanding its harm, it remains not only legal but highly accessible and profitable to everyone but the consumer.

One of the main arguments for the continuance of tobacco sales is that the government should not dictate what vices the public engages in. This is a valid point. Alcohol and gambling are restricted but not prohibited; fast food is unrestricted; and, although government intervention is on the rise, few are protesting access to these products. These other ‘sins’, however, have at least some benefit. We need gasoline, we need to eat even if we occasionally do so at fast food restaurants, alcohol in moderation has benefits and gambling in moderation is entertaining for some. However, there is no moderation in tobacco. There is no level at which tobacco smoke is safe for the consumer or the people around them or even those who are exposed in a tertiary environment 

There are benefits from tobacco taxation including fewer smokers, higher government revenues and a healthier society and we should applaud the use of the excise tax lever that the government can use discriminately. However, the direct and indirect cost of lung cancer, asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is huge, of which smoking is considered to be the number one cause. That’s not a good trade-off, even if you only consider it economically.

So why do we, as a society, continue to approve of tobacco sales?
gpt
America already tried Prohibition.

Alcohol isn't good. It causes both health and social problems. We'd largely be better off without it.

When we tried to ban it, what we got was... massively powerful criminal gangs, corruption, and a diminished respect for the law and government in general.

That's the issue here. You can't just flip a switch that says "tobacco is gone now." You have to deal with millions of angry addicts who will do anything they can to nullify that law.