Topic: Tobacco in all forms should be illegal.
For: Inui
Against: Lawrence von Reaper

Judges: Maraj, Dez384, DragonHellfire

Do Not Begin until January Fifth. Inui leads.

Tobacco is one of the most filthy things ever known to mankind. It destroys your health, is expensive for those that smoke, and it's gross to those that don't smoke.

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Reasons to Outlaw Tobacco Entirely


1. It's the single most detrimental thing one can do for their health beyond something insanely extremely like sleeping in asbestos or living in a toxic volcano.

"Cigarette smoking is the single most preventable cause of premature death in the United States. Each year, more than 400,000 Americans die from cigarette smoking. In fact, one in every five deaths in the United States is smoking related. Every year, smoking kills more than 276,000 men and 142,000 women."

Source: http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics...moking_mort.htm

Tobacco is deadly. It kills people. That should be reason enough to outlaw it. However, it isn't, as shown by the government keeping it legal.


2. It's dangerous even to those that don't smoke, and it's disgusting to them.

"Annually, exposure to secondhand smoke (or environmental tobacco smoke) causes an estimated 3,000 deaths from lung cancer among American adults. Scientific studies also link secondhand smoke with heart disease."

Source is the same as the other quote.

You don't even have to smoke to be in danger. Secondhand smoke damages you, as well. On top of that, the smell of cigarettes, in my opinion especially, is disgusting. It makes me sick. The smoke is also very irritating and makes it hard to breathe. It's a bother for those that don't smoke, and that's about half of the adult population.

3. The large amount of land used for growing tobacco can be used to grow food, used for wind energy farms, parks, etc.

That's a minor benefit, but a good one nonetheless.


That's really about it for reasons.


Now, why would one ever want to keep it legal? Well, tax revenue for the government comes to mind, as well as the jobs of those working for the big tobacco companies.


Counterarguements to Keeping it Legal


1. Tax revenue: The government will need to raise taxes by a small amount to counteract the lack of tax revenue from cigarettes.

$13,958,866,000 was raised from taxes on cigarettes during 2006.

Source: http://www.rjrt.com/legal/taxPaymentTable.asp

The current population of the USA is 303,619,006, give or take a few deaths and births from the middle of December until now. Assuming a biweekly paycheck, simply increasing taxes by $1.00 per paycheck will help make up for that. That would only cost $26 per person, per year, which is incredibly minimal. That would raise $7,894,094,156 per year from taxes.

but that's only a little over half waaaah

Who cares? You don't even have to do that to make up for the lack of tax revenue. That tax money, as well as the billions saved on health care, can go to create new jobs for those that lose their jobs from tobacco companies going out of business.


2. 120,424 people work for tobacco companies and they will lose their jobs if tobacco is made illegal, but we can just use the saved money to help them.

Treating smoking related health issues costs 72.7 billion dollars per year in the USA. That number is astronomical. Simply making cigarettes illegal will net us a profit of ~$58,700,000,000.

Sources: http://www.statemaster.com/graph/lab_bev_t...umber-employees and http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/19...16/smoking.html

All of the money saved on health care can be used to create new jobs for those people, and/or give them welfare until they get new jobs.


Tobacco phailz.

Larry failed to Reply. Larry Loses, Inui Wins.

larry loses again