- And laissez faire economy
The world’s anti-tobacco lobby has been campaigning against smoking, etc, for decades yet all it has achieved is slightly high prices for cigarettes and cigars in the developed world plus the odd discomforting picture of some cancer patient on the cover to deter would be smokers. However, considering how strong black market demand is created even for drugs and other smoking related contraband and beyond, it is easy to understand why people continue to beeline for cigarettes since the free market allows them.
And there lies the problem. Tobacco firms have become financial behemoths by exploiting rising demand because supply remains unregulated. One reason is the economic leverage big firms – not just in the tobacco industry – can exercise which, in turn, grants them lobbying privileges close to the corridors of power. That way they keep any legislation that would meaningfully restrict, or simply ban, substances like tobacco which are known killers from ever seeing the light of day. Third World countries like Pakistan fare far worse than developed ones, since the latter have at least erected social and public barriers to smoking; and one must make the effort to walk away from public if one must satisfy one’s nicotine urge.
Another way of countering this problem is encouraging sports and physical activity from an early age. Sportsmen tend to keep such things at arm’s length primarily because smoking compromises their lungs and affects their performance. Those lobbying to diminish tobacco use should consider alternate, indirect approaches as well especially since their frontal attack, backed by tons of evidence, has only met with failure and disappointment for decades. It will be a while before any progress is made in our neck of the woods, though. Faced with existential problems like terrorism, impending drought, food shortage, etc, we have placed everyday problems like cancer and tobacco way down the priority list. For the foreseeable future, then, supply will continue to create demand.