Dear sir,
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An outright ban on tobacco would almost certainly save some lives for the reasons Griffin outlines: it would become more difficult to obtain and consume. Unfortunately it would also mean the creation of a massive new illegal business that would dwarf the present illegal drug trade and make outlaws out of millions of smokers, farmers, and merchants. Since today tobacco is used disproportionately by lower income and blue collar workers the ban would smack of the kind of class bias that helped destroy the legitimacy of prohibition. The costs of enforcement in dollars and lives ruined by violence, corruption, and lawlessness is impossible to measure but would certainly be much greater than the toll of the current drug war, which is crowding our courts and prisons.
A ban on tobacco advertising would not be unconstitutional; the Supreme Court has already ruled that such commercial speech isn’t protected. Of course a publication like the Reader might be concerned about the loss of revenue, but the public health is more important to most people than the profits to be made by selling death. Since tobacco is killing hundreds of thousands each year we should do what we can to discourage its use by increasing taxes, restoring the very effective TV public service antismoking ads, and banning advertising and promotions of this deadly but all too seductive and addictive product.
