Smoking is a direct individual choice (unless talking about second-hand smoking, which is a moot subject)… An individual doesn’t need a government to protect him from smoking.
I think you are pointing at this same thing with your final sentence’s “in 2020,” but calling second hand smoke a moot subject is only true because government has already done so much to protect individuals from it. I’m in my 30s and I remember restaurants with smoking and nonsmoking tables next to each other in the same room. My mother was perfectly able as a kid to go buy cigarettes, just by claiming they were for someone else, and had no idea why she shouldn’t, because the relevant public health campaigns hadn’t yet happened. My neighbor, now in her 80s, remembers as a kid not wanting to be around smokers and breathe in smoke; her family doctor basically told her she was crazy to worry about it and to get over it/get used to it—all while smoking during their appointment.
I’ve read that most smokers start while in middle or high school, not exactly an age where we generally expect people to behave sanely with appropriate consideration of long term consequences. To whatever degree smoking is addictive and hard to quit later in life, that’s the key timeframe for intervention, and kids do need authority figures to keep them from starting, one way or another. That doesn’t have to be (in whole or in part) government, but I have no argument I find convincing as to why it shouldn’t be.
I think you are pointing at this same thing with your final sentence’s “in 2020,” but calling second hand smoke a moot subject is only true because government has already done so much to protect individuals from it. I’m in my 30s and I remember restaurants with smoking and nonsmoking tables next to each other in the same room. My mother was perfectly able as a kid to go buy cigarettes, just by claiming they were for someone else, and had no idea why she shouldn’t, because the relevant public health campaigns hadn’t yet happened. My neighbor, now in her 80s, remembers as a kid not wanting to be around smokers and breathe in smoke; her family doctor basically told her she was crazy to worry about it and to get over it/get used to it—all while smoking during their appointment.
I’ve read that most smokers start while in middle or high school, not exactly an age where we generally expect people to behave sanely with appropriate consideration of long term consequences. To whatever degree smoking is addictive and hard to quit later in life, that’s the key timeframe for intervention, and kids do need authority figures to keep them from starting, one way or another. That doesn’t have to be (in whole or in part) government, but I have no argument I find convincing as to why it shouldn’t be.