[AdamH12113]

Smoking, at anything like the scale it currently happens, is not in any way a deliberate, rational acceptance of risk vs. reward. Almost all smokers start smoking when they are teenagers (i.e. children), when their brains are not fully developed. Nicotine is highly addictive, which makes it very difficult to later make a rational decision to stop. And teenagers who do start smoking do not do so as individuals in a vacuum, they do so with other teenagers due to peer pressure and other social factors.

Marketing a highly-addictive carcinogen to children is not about "personal freedom".

[choko]

Your argument boils down to "think of the children" which I do not find compelling. I can rationalize taking all kinds of things away from people with that logic.

[sdorf]

You're setting up a straw man for yourself to knock down; the points they're making are more nuanced than just 'think of the children' and you're being excessively reductive when you frame it that way.

[choko]

Make another argument then. There are lots of ways to protect children without limiting the liberty of consenting adults.

[valeness]

So tell that to my stepmom that made me sit in a car when I was 13 years old with the windows rolled up while she chain smoked on a 2 hour drive because she was on the phone and couldn't hear with the windows down. Despite my protests...

Your freedoms end where mine begin. If you want to smoke, fine. Do it in a location where I NEVER have to breathe it in.

[AdamH12113]

My point is that "consenting adults" aren't really involved here. A "think of the children argument" is when you argue for banning something that adults do because a child might be exposed to it and might suffer harm as a result. An example would be wanting to ban porn (something for adults) because a little kid might see it and warp their fragile young mind, or whatever. The key part of this scenario is that the little kid's exposure to porn is neither intentional nor desired (on the part of porn producers) or common.

Starting smoking, on the other hand, is something that, for the most part, only children do. The entire goal of tobacco companies is to get children addicted so they'll keep buying nicotine for the rest of their lives, without any adult decision-making involved. Here are some numbers for you:

Almost 90% of people in the US who smoke tried their first cigarette before they were 18[1]. Effectively all of the rest did before they were 26 (most by 22), which is around the age where the human brain's capacity for risk assessment and long-term decision-making is fully developed. Two thirds of daily smokers started doing that by the time they were 18, and over 95% did by the time they were 26. Over a quarter of daily smokers started before they were 15. Furthermore, people who start smoking are most likely to do so with the help of their peers (i.e. other children), not adults.

The concept of rational free choice is a bit murky even under the best circumstances. When you add in addiction, it gets a lot more complicated. And when you're talking about children getting addicted, I don't think it's a helpful framework. Children are not capable of consenting to a destructive long-term addiction, and in practice, almost nobody else does.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/n/surgtobyouth/pdf/ See chapter 3, especially Table 3.2.