Money

While it is true that the taxes are a great benefit to the U.S., the medical costs are so much more damning, especially in our failing healthcare system and its inability to keep up with obesity rates financially. I know it is hard to add up the medical costs related to smoking health issues as compared to the tax profits from tobacco, but it might even be higher than the benefits! How does no one realize this or think of it??

Megan, you raise a great point in questioning whether the benefits gained from taxing tobacco are worth the inarguable impacts on health and the resultant billions spent on healthcare and lost productivity on smoking-related morbidities across the globe; however I would argue that we have opened a bit of a Pandora's box that may be too difficult to close entirely. Many people live stressful lives fraught with unhappiness and crave some sort of release from it -- no matter how temporary. As a former smoker, I can say that the nicotine rush from smoking cigarettes and/or cigars is simply so good that even when I was well aware of the damage I was doing to my body, I kept smoking for that same fantastic sensation. Whenever you are dealing with substances that can elicit such strong and addictive responses such as tobacco, I would think that even if America outlawed the production and sale of it entirely, we would see underground drug-related markets producing and distributing them across populations not unlike what we see in marijuana today and overall use would still continue behind closed doors.

I believe tobacco is a drug just like marijuana, cocaine, and the like, but found itself on the right side of history (in contrast to these other illegal substances) so its sale is permitted by governmental bodies despite its known risks. Unfortunately, I also believe that people will continue using inebriants of this sort to escape from their everyday lives. With this in mind, I presume that governmental bodies simply allow it to continue and try to make a buck off its sale as its outlawing would only prove to push the profits of tobacco into the pocketbooks of more criminal elements.

The sliver lining to this issue is that thanks to efforts such as the Surgeon General's acknowledgement and limiting the amount of kitchy advertisements (I can still remember the Camel cigarettes cartoon ad from when I was a kid), smoking rates have declined steadily over time. We many not ever be able to remove tobacco's impact entirely, but hopefully through continued efforts via public education, awareness, and advances in Nicotine Replacement Therapy, we can minimize the impact this substance has on people even if we are never able to stop it entirely.