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The word "freedom" does not appear in the article. The loss of freedom from a smoking ban should at least be acknowledged. Trying to ban smoking will create a black market whose products may be more dangerous than the current ones. Eric Garner died after an arrest for selling single cigarettes from packs without tax stamps. Bans don't enforce themselves. Do we want police going after people selling cigarettes?
I tend to agree. You at least have to talk about the loss of freedom. Moreover on a practical level, you'd have to ban smoking in the entire hemisphere, and even then, you'd get smugglers bringing it in from the EU and Asia.
Now that marijuana is legal, can we at least smoke that?
> died after an arrest

This is such a weird way to phrase it. He was murdered by a police officer who choked him to death.

Smoking tobacco is older than the US. any chance of a "prohibition" type situation cropping up?
> Smoking tobacco is older than the US.

Burning witches is older than the US too, if we're gonna get all argumentum ad antiquitatem in here.

I don’t see people burning witches as part of their daily routines in 2024.
Ahah! So you admit the ban worked!
Was it a ban, or did they just run out of witches?
Prohibiting smoking indoors or in common areas, I can understand. But vaping?

“The results are not super clear, but certainly hint towards vaping causing damage to the lungs and other organs,” says Carolyn Baglole, who studies lung disease at the McGill University Health Centre in Montreal, Canada.

I.E. there is no evidence that banning vaping would improve anything. In all likelihood, we would save millions of lives if everybody who smoked switched to vaping.

Before we ban what might be the most effective stop-smoking method ever, I think we should hold off for real scientific results to come in.

Personal evidence as lifelong nicotine product user(used to only smoke, now have snus and patches as well): Don't see myself dropping nicotine under any circumstances. I've survived all the price hikes, if I have to go the extralegal route to get it I will.

Never liked vapes, know too many people who had bad outcomes with side effects from the unstandardized liquids during the initial craze(although this is probably much better now).