Should Tobacco Sales Be Banned in the United States?

The numbers like this ⁰ tell you which source in the bibliography the part comes from.

Smoking tobacco is the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States(US)³; for example, smoking is linked to approximately 80 percent of deaths caused by lung cancer.⁴ Despite both statistics pointing towards the dangers of smoking, tobacco has remained popular across the US since the beginning of the nation. Due to the popularity and demand for tobacco, the US government has continued to allow the use of the plant to remain legal.⁹ However, considering the Constitution and amendments, which are the basis for all laws in the US, does the government have the right to keep tobacco legal? Although tobacco, which contains the highly addictive drug nicotine, is popular in America today, tobacco not only costs the healthcare system more money than its taxes bring in but also directly defies citizens’ constitutional right to life and liberty.

Understanding how tobacco sales defy the Constitution requires understanding five points. First, one must understand what tobacco is and what smoking it does. Second, one must understand the history of tobacco, for the past affects the modern use. Third, one must address the main arguments for the legality of tobacco: how the tax money from tobacco helps the healthcare system and how the people must have the liberty to choose whether or not to smoke. Fourth, one must counter the arguments by explaining how tobacco defies the people’s rights. Finally, one must show how the knowledge that tobacco sales are unconstitutional can be put to good use.

What is tobacco? Broadly speaking, tobacco is a plant found within the Nicotiana genus, a group of the nightshade family.¹⁰ However, the specific tobacco plant used in cigarettes is the Nicotiana Tabacum.⁶ Although the Nicotiana genus is made up of some ninety species found in nature, the tobacco plant used for cigarettes and other such tobacco based drugs is a subspecies found only in cultivation. Found only in cultivation means that Nicotiana Tabacum is a plant genetically modified into existence by humans.⁷ However, the whole Nicotiana Tabacum plant is not used and instead, only the leaves are used for smoking. 

What does smoking tobacco leaves do to the human body? As the leaves of the tobacco plant are smoked, nicotine, a toxic drug, is released into the air and inhaled. When nicotine is inhaled the drug acts as a stimulant, increasing heart rate, rate of breathing, and levels of dopamine, resulting in a highly addictive “good” feeling. As the Center for Addiction and Mental Health states, “The mood-altering effects of nicotine are subtle, complex, and powerful. Some people feel that smoking helps them to be alert and to concentrate, and also that it helps them to feel relaxed.”² Smoking also reduces feelings of hunger and fatigue, creating only the illusion that the smoker is better off. However, nicotine is toxic and therefore dangerous, and the inhaling of the drug negatively affects every organ in the human body. Although in the short term smoking provides relief from fatigue, sadness, hunger, and so forth, in the long term smoking damages all organs and can eventually lead to serious health conditions and even death. 

Where did using tobacco for smoking originate from? The first recorded use of tobacco smoking was religious ceremonies performed by the Maya people throughout Central America in the first century BC. Later on, as the Maya people migrated further north, tobacco smoking spread to the Native American tribes. Unlike the Maya people, the Native Americans did not use smoking solely for religious purposes but also extended their use of it into the medical field as well. By the time the Portuguese and Spanish sailors reached America, the Natives had begun to use tobacco more and more frequently, and the foreign sailors picked up the habit and spread tobacco use across the world.⁹ Because nicotine makes people feel good, tobacco was believed to be medicinal for centuries and initially when the sailors spread smoking across the world, it was not used simply as a way to pass time but also as a form of medicine.⁸  

What do modern people use smoking tobacco for? With up to date science, smoking can no longer be considered medicinal and therefore one would conclude that modern people do not use smoking medicinally. However, despite modern science, people continue to smoke as if tobacco is medicinal, using the “good feelings” nicotine creates to escape from and cope with problems with work, relationships, health, and more.¹² Moreover, people use smoking simply as a way to pass time. Smoking tobacco originated from religious ceremonies, expanded into the medical field, and eventually became a standard of living in society despite all the health conditions modern studies have proved to be linked with smoking. 

Since smoking is an expensive pastime which can cause health issues, how does smoking affect the healthcare system? To start, the tax money from tobacco, roughly 11.26 billion dollars per year in the US, is used to fund health programs for adults and children. For example, according to the American Lung Association, “On the federal level, revenue from cigarette and tobacco taxes help fund programs that support children and adults across the country, including the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). CHIP provides health insurance to many children in the U.S. who would otherwise be uninsured.”¹ As the selling of tobacco helps the healthcare system by funding the children and adults who could otherwise not afford healthcare, tobacco sales can be seen as good and helpful. 

However, smoking tobacco not only brings in money to the healthcare system, but because of nicotine’s toxic properties, smoking also costs the healthcare system money. In fact, tobacco related illnesses cost roughly 300 billion dollars per year in the US alone.⁵ The tobacco taxes fund children’s health programs; however, the gain from such support is negated by the number of children affected by second-hand smoking per year. In 2010 alone second-hand smoking from children led to 101,570 emergency room visits and a total of 62.9 million in excess healthcare costs.¹⁷ Smoking not only harms children and adults across the country but also ultimately costs the healthcare system more than 200 billion healthcare dollars per year more than the tobacco taxes bring in. 

Allowing tobacco to be used for smoking purposes defies the right to life for both smokers and nonsmokers. The right to life as given to the people by the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution is the right for the people to live, but more importantly, for the people to not have their lives taken away without due process of law.¹³ Moreover, the underlying statement to the right to life is that the government should protect the people’s lives. Second-hand smoke, the byproduct of smoking, affects nonsmokers without their consent, causing illness and death and therefore defying the right to life. Furthermore, although smokers on the surface seem to have consented to the consequences of smoking, making smoking is not a violation of their right to life, up to 70 percent of smokers would rather quit but cannot due to the addictive quality, often leading eventually to death.¹⁴ By allowing the populace to purchase and indulge in smoking tobacco, the government is defying the Constitution, and more specifically, the people’s right to life, whether a smoker or nonsmoker. 

However, libertarians may argue that banning tobacco is a breach of the right to liberty. The right to liberty as given to the people by the Fourteenth Amendment of the US Constitution is the right of the people to not have their liberty taken away without due process of law.¹³ However, such a definition poses one simple question: what is liberty? The Cornell Law School defines liberty within the context of the Constitution as “freedom from arbitrary and unreasonable restraints upon an individual. Freedom from restraints refers to more than just physical restraint, but also the freedom to act according to one’s own will.”¹¹ The law school further defines liberty by drawing on the definition of liberty given by The Supreme Court in Meyer v. Nebraska, “[liberty] denotes not merely freedom from bodily restraint, but also the right of the individual to contract, to engage in any of the common occupations of life.”¹¹ Therefore, banning tobacco would restrict the people’s liberty as liberty is the freedom to act according to one’s own will and the government should not dictate what vices the public engages in.¹⁵ By allowing tobacco sales and usage, the US government is allowing the people to express the right to liberty. 

However, allowing tobacco to be smoked is the real defilement of the right to liberty. The addictive quality of the nicotine within tobacco destroys the smoker’s freedom to choose whether or not to engage in smoking. When a person is addicted to the high received from nicotine, the person loses the ability to function without the nicotine, and therefore must continue smoking in order to have a life, resulting in loss of free will. Smoking is as Robert Proctor states, “Less an expression of freedom than a robbery of it. And so long as we allow the companies to cast themselves as the defenders of liberty, the table is unfairly titled. We have to recognise that smoking compromises freedom, and that retiring cigarettes would enlarge human liberties.”¹⁴ Therefore, although banning tobacco seems at first glance a breach of liberty, in reality allowing tobacco to be smoked is the breach of liberty. 

What would happen in the United States if the government followed the law and banned tobacco? The largest concern when the idea of banning tobacco is raised is that a tobacco ban would cause smuggling and illegal activity across the United States in smokers’ attempts to acquire the drug. However, smuggling is already a problem in the tobacco industry due to the high prices and even more so due to tobacco companies choosing illegal means in order to gain a better profit. Moreover, the need to smuggle in tobacco would be caused by the populace’s addiction to nicotine, and with time the demand and need for tobacco would decrease as the addicted recover from their addiction and less people start smoking in the first place. With the main issue with banning tobacco solved, a tobacco ban would have multitudinous positive benefits, such as the saving of millions of lives per year and the reduction of cost to the healthcare system. If the United States government banned tobacco, fewer people would die per year, the healthcare system would save millions of dollars, and America would become a healthier country overall.¹⁴ 

The whole issue of smoking begins with Nicotiana Tabacum, a plant genetically modified from the Nicotiana genus and used today to create cigarettes and other such devices for smoking. When smoked, tobacco releases a toxic and addictive drug known as nicotine. Nicotine affects the body, creating “good” feelings which make the smoker feel happy and healthy, all the while damaging the smoker’s organs with the drug’s toxic properties. Moreover, even simple second-hand smoking, an action performed without consent, damages the body and can lead to the death of the participant and innocent nonsmoker. Such nationwide health damage costs the US healthcare system over 200 billion dollars per year. However, more important than the healthcare cost, smoking tobacco is a breach of both the right to life and the right to liberty. Allowing tobacco sales in the United States actively destroys the American people’s rights and kills approximately 480,000 citizens per year¹⁶; such an act is unconstitutional. Furthermore, as selling tobacco is unconstitutional, tobacco sales should not remain legal. By maintaining the rights which make tobacco unconstitutional, the Constitution and Amendments set the groundwork for banning the leading cause of preventable disease, disability, and death in the United States.³ 

Bibliography 

1. American Lung Association. “Cigarette & Tobacco Taxes | American Lung Association.” Lung.org, 2019. https://www.lung.org/policy-advocacy/tobacco/tobacco-taxes.
2. CAMH. “Tobacco.” CAMH. Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, 2010. https://www.camh.ca/en/health-info/mental-illness-and-addiction-index/tobacco.
3. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Fast Facts.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. cdc, February 6, 2019. https://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/data_statistics/fact_sheets/fast_facts/index.htm.
4. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “What Are the Risk Factors for Lung Cancer?” center for disease control and prevention, September 22, 2020. https://www.cdc.gov/cancer/lung/basic_info/risk_factors.htm.
5. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. “Health Topics – Tobacco – POLARIS.” www.cdc.gov. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, September 30, 2021. https://www.cdc.gov/policy/polaris/healthtopics/tobacco/index.html.
6. Harris, Stephen. “Oxford University Plants 400: Nicotiana Tabacum.” herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk. University of Oxford. Accessed March 20, 2024. https://herbaria.plants.ox.ac.uk/bol/plants400/Profiles/MN/Nicotiana.
7. Haustein, Knut-Olaf. Tobacco or Health? New York: Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg, 2010  
8. Holmes J, George K. “Some Features Of Tobacco History.” Agricultural History Society Papers 2 (1923): 385–407. http://www.jstor.org/stable/44215783
9. Mishra, Shanu, and MB Mishra. “Tobacco: Its Historical, Cultural, Oral, and Periodontal Health Association.” Journal of International Society of Preventive and Community Dentistry 3, no. 1 (2013): 12. https://doi.org/10.4103/2231-0762.115708.
10. Wisconsin Horticulture. “Flowering Tobacco, Nicotiana Sylvestris.” University of Wisconsin-Madison. Accessed March 20, 2024. https://hort.extension.wisc.edu/articles/flowering-tobacco-nicotiana-sylvestris/.
11. Legal Information Institute. “Liberty,” June 2020. https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/liberty.
12. Mental Health Foundation. “Smoking and Mental Health.” www.mentalhealth.org.uk, March 9, 2021. https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/explore-mental-health/a-z-topics/smoking-and-mental-health.
13. National Constitution Center. “The 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.” National Constitution Center – constitutioncenter.org. Accessed February 21, 2024. https://constitutioncenter.org/the-constitution/amendments/amendment-xiv.
14. Proctor, Robert N. “Why Ban the Sale of Cigarettes? The Case for Abolition.” Tobacco Control 22, no. suppl 1 (April 15, 2013): i27–30. https://doi.org/10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2012-050811.
15. Tiffin, Norman H. “Why Do We Still Permit Tobacco Use?” Canadian Journal of Respiratory Therapy : CJRT = Revue Canadienne de La Therapie Respiratoire : RCTR 51, no. 4 (2015): 85. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4631133/.
16. www.lung.org. “Tobacco Facts | State of Tobacco Control.” American Lung Associations, January 19, 2024. https://www.lung.org/research/sotc/facts.
17. Yao, Tingting. “Healthcare Costs of Secondhand Smoke Exposure at Home for U.S. Children,” February 2019.