I don't think tobacco products are inherently bad. I think the largest share of the problem is the wild lengths cigarette companies have gone to throughout history to get millions upon millions addicted to them. They manufactured them to be as addictive as possible and proceeded to market them with amazing efficiency.

I think the way we square that contradiction of prohibition being bad but cigarettes also being bad is by targeting the cigarette companies directly. Force them to pay restitutions to people and families affected negatively by cigarettes. Seize their companies and sell off their assets, use that money to fund programs for people looking to quit smoking. But please don't go out arresting small time dealers and manufacturers who are probably just trying to pay rent. And for the love of god please don't go out arresting the people buying from said dealers. Trying to enforce prohibition at that level is just a blank check for more police violence. You say they don't need an excuse, and I think that's mostly correct, but I'd rather not give them any pretense at all. Force the police to show their ass to the whole world by not giving them any legal justifications whatsoever.

I believe a socialist society could totally devote some small amount of labor towards producing tobacco products at more reasonable scales. Cuba is widely known for cigars, after all. If a community wanted to set up their own tobacco farm for their own enjoyment, I don't see why we should stop them. It would be almost like a community wide hobby. At a certain point we need to recognize people's bodily autonomy. Large cigarette companies bypassed that autonomy through the magic of marketing. Smaller, community run operations could act much more ethically through their accountability to the community they exist within.

I think such small operations should be encouraged even, so that cigarettes are not totally relegated to black markets where there is zero regulation at all. Black market cigarettes are something we really want to avoid taking off. If you think cigarettes are deadly now, just wait until they are produced illegally with absolutely zero oversight. See the ubiquity of Fentanyl laced Heroin as an analogous example in the opioid epidemic. Prohibition leads to extremely dangerous products.

The biggest problem was allowing for the existence of large, profit motivated companies that depend on mass cigarette addiction for business. If they never existed, cigarette addiction would never have become such a massive problem in the first place.