I thought Linda's view on cigarettes was really interesting to me in Put It On The Banned List. Interesting to me considering I did used to smoke and I have a significant amount of family members and friends that do smoke. I thought she made a lot of great points about why cigarettes should be banned. Cigarettes are extremely dangerous to the society and it does slowly kill people and it's just simply completely unhealthy for anyone. However, whether or not the government is trying to stop people from smoking cigarettes now, do I think that they should make cigarettes illegal along with Marijuana, Heroin. Cocaine, Ecstasy, etc?
My answer is No. I do think if it were made illegal, plenty of people would stop smoking and the lung cancer rate and every other negative thing that comes from cigarettes would significantly drop. While at the same time there would be many negatives that come from banning cigarettes. First of all, people would keep smoking illegally. Tobacco companies would go "underground" and sell illegally. Tobacco farmers would keep producing and selling their tobacco. Crime rate would increase involving tobacco, and so many other negatives would come from banning cigarettes. It would be a new prohibition, and if we learned anything from the alcohol prohibition, banning cigarettes is just not a smart idea.
I think everyone in their right mind would agree that cigarettes a bad for you, even the avid smoker. However, I just don't think it would be an intelligent decision by the government to ban cigarettes. We don't need a new prohibition and people have their own unalienable right to make their own stupid decisions.
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