by Quintino Johnson

Created on: July 26, 2008   Last Updated: July 29, 2008

Enough already with the anti-smoking campaigns. Tobacco/cigarettes should be declared an illegal substance. Why are the production, sale, and possession of cigarettes legal? Society is no longer oblivious to the affects cigarettes have on human health for smokers and non-smokers alike. Thus the question remains; why are the production, sale and possession of cigarettes legal?

Cocaine causes approximately 87 reported deaths per year in the USA. Let's estimate that another 10,000 deaths caused by cocaine go unreported. Better, lets get radical and estimate that cocaine kills 500,000 people per year. Cocaine is addictive and most importantly cocaine is illegal.

Yet.

Around 5.4 million deaths a year are caused by tobacco use.

The American Lung Association reports secondhand smoke causes approximately 10,400 lung cancer deaths and 22,700-69,600 heart disease deaths in adult nonsmokers in the United States each year.

The current Surgeon General's Report concluded that scientific evidence indicates that there is no risk-free level of exposure to secondhand smoke. Short exposures to secondhand smoke can cause blood platelets to become stickier, damage the lining of blood vessels, decrease coronary flow velocity reserves, and reduce heart rate variability, potentially increasing the risk of heart attack. Cigarettes are addictive and tobacco use will kill 1 billion people in the 21st century if current smoking trends continue. Again, shockingly, the production, sale, and possession of cigarettes are legal.

Why?

The government receives over 3 billion per year in tax revenues from cigarettes.

Is the tax revenue from cigarettes worth our lives? NO.

If cigarettes where illegal would the death rate drop? YES.

If cigarettes where illegal would a criminal market for cigarettes develop? YES.

Now, replace cigarettes with cocaine; assume the tax revenue remains constant. In my opinion, the answers would remain the same. The tax revenue from cocaine would not be worth lives; the meager cocaine caused death rate can be attributed to the amount of citizens that will refuse cocaine because it is illegal; its rate would be significantly higher if cocaine where legal. The cocaine criminal market is small when compared the legal multi-billion dollar global conglomerate tobacco industry.

Tobacco consumption is the single largest preventable cause of premature death and disease in U.S. Smoking has become less prevalent in the U.S., but, there are still more than 40 million Americans who smoke daily.

Smoking

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