For hundreds of years tobacco has been a major part of the economic foundation of colonial and later republican America. Only in the 1960's did the government "discover" the health hazards related to it. But by then it was just so profitable in terms of excise tax yields to both federal and state governments that forbidding the sale on the health grounds would mean higher taxes elsewhere. Besides, an illegal market for tobacco would immediately arise in its place that would yield "tax" revenues only to the smugglers. This all goes to show how governments as well as people get addicted to addictive substances. We as citizens are all addicted in the sense that we depend upon smokers to disproportionately pay taxes for their vice and then graciously die prematurely without collecting their fair share of Social Security retirement benefits.

What self-sacrificing partriots.