At the core of the problem is that social services that address the physical consequences of smoking (mostly medical professionals and financial counselors) are run by people who believe that everyone ought to be treated similarly and have similar opportunities, regardless of behavior.
Smoking is considered "a problem" to society because intelligent, caring people that notice that smoking injuries and medical conditions cause sorrow, strife, and excess medical waste. They've run huge propaganda campaigns to get us to care about this problem: literally "other people are dying because of this habit so you need to hate this habit."
But the people who smoke usually don't care about the social sorrow & strife caused by smoking, and they don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to provide hospitals or lung cancer screenings. They just smoke because they enjoy it and don't really anticipate or care about the consequences.
So really, what's going on is that well-intentioned meddlers are trying to meddle in the lives of people who don't share the utopian, collaborative values of the meddlers.
The answers that actually solve "the problem"--ban cigarette sales outright, imprison or exile smokers, refuse medical treatment to smokers--are unthinkable to the meddlers, because they genuinely believe in their principles, especially "everyone in society should be taken care of by competent people".
(For the record: I don't smoke, and I don't think anyone should smoke.)
> “ So really, what's going on is that well-intentioned meddlers are trying to meddle in the lives of people who don't share the utopian, collaborative values of the meddlers. Predictably, this doesn't work.”
It actually did work incredibly well (at least in the US). Smoking went from something the majority of the American population did that was present in almost all private and public spaces to something only a small minority does in a small number of places.
Whether or not you agree with the methods, I think it is necessary to recognize that the methods worked.
There's really no saying whether it actually worked for good or not. Nicotine consumption has gone through several phases of boom and bust in the course of it's history (the book The Soverane Herbe is an interesting if very dated account of some of the history).
I was thinking more about the "at risk" populations that are very resilient to smoking interventions, which are what the seventh-grade propaganda campaigns that I sat through and are talked about in the article are trying to capture and influence. There are still 20-30M adult smokers in the US, and cigarette sales are pretty stable. Smoking is still considered "a problem" by smoking interventionists, but they're not doing a great job at finally stamping it out, because they need harsher methods than learning campaigns and well-intentioned propaganda.
Edit: I had removed "predictably, this doesn't work" from my original comment before you commented for the exact reason that you commented. To a degree, it does work, on people who typically follow rules, when it's combined with taxes and bans that make it a crime to smoke.
> literally "other people are dying because of this habit so you need to hate this habit."
I didn't need a media campaign to hate this habit, although it probably helped when they made Mr. Potato Head give up his pipe, the smell and the residues everywhere were enough.
I guess it was one way to get kids to play outside; I never wanted to be in my grandparents' homes while they were smokers. Didn't matter if they were smoking at the time, it was always gross.
You're in low-risk group, then. I think 95-99% of HN commenters don't even need an emotional response to smoking trained into them; just an explanation of the risks is enough, or an appeal to their manners (some people don't like the smell of smoking.)
I personally like the smell of smoke and get a great nicotine buzz when I do smoke. If it didn't cause health issues I'd smoke all day.
> They enjoy it and don't really anticipate or care about the consequences.
This is the actual core and it applies to all risky and anti-social behavior. Speeding while driving, sloth, over indulgence, smoking, addictive drugs, ..etc
What's your take on the morbidly obese? Deny food and let their diabetes take hold?
Obesity is different, because eating is a basic need, and the factors in the US behind obesity have more to do with the available food being "poisoned": corn syrup, pressed oil, dyes, and other industrial fillers are added to almost all packaged foods, and social traditions around food preparation are vanishing because they're inconvenient with the modern lifestyle.
If you don't want to be obese, you have to maintain constant self-denial, long-term planning, and a basic scientific understanding of nutrition in the face of your available food supply being hijacked by advertisers and profiteers. For millions of years, the best possible strategy for feeding was "acquire as many calories as possible and make them as tasty as possible", and only in the past 30-40 years has that strategy suddenly started yielding bad results.
I think there is a much stronger need for a huge legal and philosophical intervention into the western food supply than there is into the western nicotine supply.
> imprison or exile smokers, refuse medical treatment to smokers
.. doesn't work in the rest of the war on drugs. But on the other hand, if you care that little about their outcomes that you're willing to do those things, why are you doing them in the first place rather than leaving them alone?
If it doesn't work in the war on drugs, then why is the drug epidemic worse in the US than it is in Asia?
The reason the US is losing the war on drugs is not because harsh measures don't work, it's because the measures in the US are inconsistently applied by incompetent and corrupt leadership and agents.
Smoking is considered "a problem" to society because intelligent, caring people that notice that smoking injuries and medical conditions cause sorrow, strife, and excess medical waste. They've run huge propaganda campaigns to get us to care about this problem: literally "other people are dying because of this habit so you need to hate this habit."
But the people who smoke usually don't care about the social sorrow & strife caused by smoking, and they don't spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to provide hospitals or lung cancer screenings. They just smoke because they enjoy it and don't really anticipate or care about the consequences.
So really, what's going on is that well-intentioned meddlers are trying to meddle in the lives of people who don't share the utopian, collaborative values of the meddlers.
The answers that actually solve "the problem"--ban cigarette sales outright, imprison or exile smokers, refuse medical treatment to smokers--are unthinkable to the meddlers, because they genuinely believe in their principles, especially "everyone in society should be taken care of by competent people".
(For the record: I don't smoke, and I don't think anyone should smoke.)