Surely, if relatively harmless things like playing music and being naked can be prohibited in public, then anything actually capable of causing serious disease to non- participants should be, even more so.
In some respects, there are good reasons for outlawing cigarette smoking altogether, the exact same way smoking marijuana is already illegal. Like cigarettes, marijuana is only harmful to the smoker or to others who breath in second-hand smoke. Nevertheless, it is illegal to smoke marijuana, even in absolute private in one's own home. It is difficult to understand why smoking one type of vegetation should be perfectly legal, (even in public where others are exposed to its harms), while it is illegal to smoke another type of vegetation, even in private.
If anything, the manner in which typical cigarette smokers consume 10 or 20 or even 30 or 40 cigarettes every day is much more harmful to the smoker than the typical way most marijuana smokers use marijuana infrequently, or even daily. One obvious difference between marijuana and alcohol consumption, which is only prohibited in association with driving, but permissible in private.
Possibly the strongest reason for prohibiting cigarette smoking altogether is that society, including non-smokers, must absorb many of the medical costs incurred by smokers.
Health care is already one of the most important issues in the country, because so many
Americans are uninsured. Why should those of us who do not smoke be forced to bear the financial burden of paying for the medical costs of treating the medical consequences of smokers, when those costs are entirely preventable? Ultimately, the best solution would be either to prohibit smoking altogether, or at least make smokers ineligible for medical care at everybody else's expense.
