system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Banning smoking is not a stupid idea and would actually be a highly effective public health measure.

It's the most common topic in high school debating, and usually it's far easier for the side arguing it shouldn't be banned; it doesn't address the real problem, it raises good money through taxes and people will still smoke (see alcohol prohibition). Indeed it often seems like an exercise in understanding why even though smoking is reviled, it needs to be legal.

So I feel like an idiot for believing that if smoking were to be banned, there'd be a rapid drop off in usage. While some criminals will profit from getting into the illegal cigarette business, it seems like the majority of smokers are law abiding citizens who otherwise have no involvement in the criminal world. Many people addicted to smoking are older and have families; would a mother really begin associating with criminals just to continue something she knows is a destructive habit she's been meaning to quit anyway. 

On the flipside, how far a length would people go to obtain a drug that gives a mild buzz, especially if you can't do it with your friends in public. Whatever purpose young people seek from smoking seems to come just as easily from energy drinks. I would think that, if it has the same accessibility as marijuana and ecstasy, which are statistically safer drugs as far as overall health effects, people would seek out those other drugs.

With banning smoking comes a decline in the social factors that contribute to the continued transition to addiction. Smoke breaks at work, going out the back of the bar for a smoke and a quiet chat, making a friend with a lighter. Society will find a way to achieve all those things, and gone will be the cross purposes of smoking.

Sure, those who are already addicted to smoking will continue to smoke, and it will be criminals profiting instead of small business and government. But this would be a small portion of smokers.

Also on the government point, is it really ethical for our government to be profiting from something so destructive? It's good that taxes are used to discourage smoking, but I'm not sure if it works all that well for something so addictive, nor will it be easy for the government to give up.

I have been up against people with those arguments in debates and trounced them every time. But those are my views, and I never quite understand why they're so silly.

I didn't make this topic to argue whether smoking is a good thing or not. I don't want to change that view. Nor do I want to argue whether it's someone's right to smoke or not; that's an issue for another thread and comes under a similar umbrella to other drugs. What I'm seeking to change is my view that given smoking is bad, banning it is the best move for public health, rather than the commonly accepted status quo of disincentives like taxes, warnings, plain packaging, advertising bans and other measures.
gpt
Since there is a huge user base of highly addicted smokers (nicotine is often *the* most addictive substance in studies, sometimes second after heroin), the only effect such a law would have would be the instant creation of a huge black market. Since our societies all over the world have had a 0% success in curbing the black markets of other illegal drugs, there is not really any chance we'd contain this one either. So, people wouldn't stop smoking. The life of a smoker would just suck even more (and yet not enough to quit, trust me). Cigarettes would become more expensive, have less quality control. Smokers would have to smoke at home only, which would give them terrible withdrawal symptoms during the day and probably ruin their productivity as well as making them highly irritable. The black market would lead to more gang violence, as it always does. Lost tax revenue would take a shit on the economy. It'd just be awful in every way.