First off let me state that I smoked for about 20 years. I quit cold-turkey right at two years ago.
But here's my take on smoking:
People need to either leave it alone, or they need to ban tobacco altogether. PERIOD. They are trying to have their cake and eat it too by keeping smoking legal (and receiving huge amounts of taxes on the sale of tobacco) but yet making it illegal in most places at the same time. This doesn't work and opens a whole other can of worms.
No one is arguing that smoking isn't harmful... and no one is pretending to not know the health risks they take by smoking. To be honest, I've put on 50 lbs since I quit smoking and while I do breathe easier I feel less healthy now compared to when I did smoke, but that's just a matter of me getting off of my blubber butt and doing something about it.
Which brings up another subject. Someone stated that "as long as they don't have to pay for others to smoke, then they have no problems with it"... well according to some people non-smokers *DO* pay for smokers to smoke in the way of higher insurance premiums and more expensive healthcare. Personally, I haven't seen the statistics (for what they are worth) and don't know enough to decide whether this is the case or not, but simply logic dictates this: Based on that statement, you could also take the opposite to be true, "I would be against smoking if I had to pay more because of it". Correct? And from that you could extrapolate, "I would be against fast food if I had to pay more because of it". Right? I mean, Fast Food is a big reason for obesity in this country, and non-obese people have to pay more in insurance premiums and health case costs because of it, right?
So now no one is able to enjoy cigarettes -OR- hamburgers. So what's next? Let's ban MP3 players! After all, earbuds promote hearing loss... doesn't that raise healthcare costs all across the board? Also deaf people get extra tax breaks that we all have to make up for, right?
This all boils down to being on a slippery slope and I can't really go any deeper down the rabbit hole without turning this into a political discussion, but I think you've got the idea here.