I talked about this in another thread. Having tobacco companies exist with a profit incentive is bad, since this means they will always want to go out of their way to get as many people addicted to nicotine as possible, since this increases their profits. Hence the marketing, hence the very existence of menthol cigarettes, hence the handing out free samples of menthol cigarettes to kids in black communities in the 50s/60s. This is just scratching the surface of the evil shit tobacco companies have done. Without this profit incentive there simply wouldn't be nearly as many people using tobacco products. I'd expect a socialist society to still have smokers, just a lot less without the incentive to expand the customer base. In the meantime, though, it makes sense to curb tobacco use wherever possible, because it is still killing people today. Full prohibition would likely fail, but policies like plain labels have been shown to work, and I suspect banning menthols will also help, so there's plenty of room to reduce harm.
I agree with this. A socialist society would still have cigarettes but without the need for profit there wouldn't be advertising or marketing to grow their customer base. I think cigarette use would be near zero in 2 generations. Similar thing with vapes.
I talked about this in another thread. Having tobacco companies exist with a profit incentive is bad, since this means they will always want to go out of their way to get as many people addicted to nicotine as possible, since this increases their profits. Hence the marketing, hence the very existence of menthol cigarettes, hence the handing out free samples of menthol cigarettes to kids in black communities in the 50s/60s. This is just scratching the surface of the evil shit tobacco companies have done. Without this profit incentive there simply wouldn't be nearly as many people using tobacco products. I'd expect a socialist society to still have smokers, just a lot less without the incentive to expand the customer base. In the meantime, though, it makes sense to curb tobacco use wherever possible, because it is still killing people today. Full prohibition would likely fail, but policies like plain labels have been shown to work, and I suspect banning menthols will also help, so there's plenty of room to reduce harm.
I agree with this. A socialist society would still have cigarettes but without the need for profit there wouldn't be advertising or marketing to grow their customer base. I think cigarette use would be near zero in 2 generations. Similar thing with vapes.