I'd argue that alcohol is a completely different beast. Most people start smoking to be "cool" or because their friends smoke (or both). It's a fact that very

I'd argue that alcohol is a completely different beast. Most people start smoking to be "cool" or because their friends smoke (or both). It's a fact that very few people start to smoke after their eighteenth birthday. If we remove the access to cigarettes and make it uncool to smoke, I firmly believe very few people would start. (I'd be ok with a period of cigarette prescriptions, so all those who smoke now and want to keep doing it could in non-public spaces.) With alcohol it's different, most people start to drink to get wasted, of course some level of "coolness" is involved and to a large degree friends, but the lure of getting high is there. Alcohol seems to fill an almost universal need for intoxication (and if it's not alcohol it's some other drug). > The latency times for tobacco effects in general make it a doozy of a thing to study Sure, but given that the damaging effects of smoking has been proven, I for one would rather play it safe. I want to have my freedom to choose when to expose myself to something that may be damaging to my body and my body alone. I don't want that choice to be done for me by someone else just because they feel like lighting up while we wait for the bus or whatever.