I don't understand...if smoking is so bad why...?

Question

Why don't they just make it illegal and STOP making it?! I'm a smoker and I don't plan on giving up, even when the ban comes in July, I'm not a heavy smoker so it won't affect me so much but if it is so bad for everyone why can't they just take it away?!!!?! I'm in the UK.

People who are telling me to quit...look at MrRM's answer!! It's my body and I'll mutilate it how I want. I didn't ask for lectures on smoking. I know it's not good for you!!

Answer 1

It don't work like that: the government make money from cigarette sales.
Plus, just because something's illegal, doesn't mean it will stop.

Answer 2

Alcohol is bad also and they tried to banned it in the US but that turned out badly so they had to legalize it.
It will turn out bad in US also to ban smoking, I don't know about the UK but in the US it violates the Constitution, in the US Constitution it is illegal to pass any law that would otherwise make ordinary law abiding citizens criminal. They haven't gone so far a to jail anyone here they just give a ticket and fine but if someone refuses to pay the fines and ends up getting jailed then they will have been made a criminal and can fight these illegal laws. I smoke also and I am a heavy smoker and I have smoked for well over thirty years and will continue to do so. Making it illegal will only create a black market for the product.

Answer 3

There are 2 big reasons:

1 Tobacco is a staple in early American history.
2 Tobacco makes too much money.
3 Adults can make responsible or irresponsible decisions
4 People need to be protected from worse drugs.

In the UK, the above, except for #1 is true. I agree that it is bad, but again, money. Maybe your government feels that tobacco is less dangerous than other drugs. I feel that all drugs should be legal and that all people should be educated about the objective truths and adults can make their own decisions. Or all drugs should be illegal, including caffeine, aspirin and can only be obtained through prescriptions.

Adults who are irresponsible and give drugs to children should be punished. Since education would be available to all people, if someone becomes addicted, they have no one else to blame. They should be given more drugs so they can die.

Answer 4

Because (a) as other answers have pointed out, the government would lose too much revenue, and (b) because the electorate wouldn't stand for it. Tobacco is a legal product (as are alcohol, and cars, and quite a lot of other things that may not be good for people), and people would not take kindly to it being made illegal. Just look at the history of prohibition (of alcohol) in the United States. The result of prohibition was not to stop people drinking, it was to give organised crime its best opportunity in decades.

Answer 5

Which drugs are legal and which not seems not so much based on how dangerous or addictive they are, but to a large extent on common understanding and culture.

Cigarettes (and even more alcohol) have been part of our culture for a long time. Even though they are much more dangerous than e.g. Marihuana, people have grown accustomed to them and consider them part of their everyday life.

That's why it would be hard to find a majority to completely ban smoking or alcohol, while it is easy to keep e.g. cocaine or heroin illegal, as most people have never tried it.

And as this is decided by politicians and a politician's success depends on what the majority thinks, this leads to the consequence, that there is not so much a rational but a historical approach to banning drugs.

Answer 6

They tried this with alcohol, look what happened during prohibition. People being slaughtered, people like Al Capone, running this big empire from the selling and making of alcohol. Alcohol was just as easy to get but It was illegal, which made all the madmen rich and murderers, they would kill each other over territory and alcohol.

Answer 7

I understand where you are coming from. I also know "someone" who is a functioning addict. It makes her a calmer, cooler, collected person. without she gets a bit strung out at times, easily stresses out about the little things. Friends have noticed in the past that "something is wrong" when she does not smoke. If Marijuana is the medicine for you - the thing that balances you mentally, then who cares what society thinks. I fully disagree with the old saying of Marijuana being the "gateway drug" . I have never heard in the News about a PotHead robbing someone for a Bag. !!! Marijuana is used around the globe by many people for many different reasons.

Answer 8

for the same reason they dont stop importing and exporting alcohol and illegal guns at the moment i would say smoking stands a better chance in escaping the law.by the way when you write that stuff you make the managers of cigarette and tobacco companies worry lol

Answer 9

smoking is bad..the government also knows that one..they are making bigger profit from it...and the drug companies rules now a days people by making addictive to their products..

..we people only think ourselves to avoid or come out from bad addictive habits like smoking and etc...you should try the best one, when once you knew exactly what bad with this..check this link below that describes the contents of cigarette smoke..

http://www.bloodindex.org/content_cigarette.php

..addictive habits are not easy to get ride off sometimes and one should need professional advices too..
.

Answer 10

The government makes too much money from taxes on smoking to make it illegal.