Should Smoking Be Illegal?

One of the largest and most problematic health issues in our society is smoking. Smoking is currently the leading cause of death in our country, due to its harmful and addicting contents, such as nicotine and tobacco. Although millions die from it each year, smoking is the single most preventable cause of death as well. Without smoking, a tremendous amount of money and lives will be saved. I think that our country should ban smoking and the production of cigarettes in order to maintain a healthier nation.

Currently in our nation, about 22 % of the people smoke, which is about 60.7 million people. All of these people are losing about 12 years of life, just by smoking. Every year, 440,000 people die of smoking related causes, which is higher than any other cause of death. Smoking causes so many deaths because it leads to many complications such as heart disease, lung problems and numerous types of cancers. Despite these health issues, cigarettes are can easily be found in almost every drug store in the United States.

My first reason why I think smoking should be illegal is because it is a detrimental and addicting drug, just like many illegal ones. Marijuana, morphine and meth are all illegal drugs that are just as harmful as nicotine. According to former Surgeon General Koop, nicotine is just as addicting as heroin and cocaine, which are also illegal drugs. Both of these illicit drugs have lower death rates than tobacco, yet cigarettes and tobacco are still allowed to be sold. Personally, I just can’t seem understand how if all of these drugs are illegal, then the leading cause of death, cigarettes, isn’t illegal

Although it might seem like the obvious thing to do is to ban smoking, many people think otherwise. One particular group that would strongly disagree is the tobacco industry. Without a doubt, this is a powerful and large industry in the United States and it spends hundreds of millions of dollars on its trade each year. With each tobacco company’s advertisements plastered all over magazines and the countless amount of time spent to perfect their product, millions of people are employed by this industry. If the selling of cigarettes is made illegal, all of these companies would completely be out of business and thousands of workers would have lost their job. These companies would be put in debt because they could no longer make a profit. Although it would be for the best, the entire tobacco industry would be outraged if smoking became illegal.

Even though tobacco companies would lose hundred of millions of dollars by going out of business, our nation is already losing even more money from having smoking part of our society. For example, about 75 billion dollars of extra money is spent just on medical care for people with smoking related health problems. Because of this large demand for healthcare,