| It's interesting that the main reason you can think of is individual liberty. Is that, to you, the best reason cigarettes are available for purchase? In my personal opinion, if it were possible to enact a law which would have the effect of ending cigarette usage in the US without any other unnecessary effects (cigarette company employees losing their jobs would be a necessary effect, of course; everyone dying because we nuked the world, on the other hand, would be an unnecessary effect), then I would be 100% in favor of enacting it. Such a law is not physically possible. A law that says "no one shall smoke, buy, sell, or make cigarettes" would not end cigarette usage in the US and would have so many ancillary negative effects as to be worse than the current situation. We saw this with Prohibition, and we're seeing it right now with the War on Drugs. --- It's also worth noting that there is plenty of underexplored middle ground between criminalization and being available at every corner store, such as: - illegal but not criminal: minor fines for using, huge fines for selling - suspension of privileges like driver's licenses - you have to register on a list when you buy and be subject to social services checking up on you (list would obviously be at least as private as medical info, and you get expunged when you get clean) - available with obstacles such as doctor's prescription, or over-the-counter but still only a subset of pharmacies |