I think the laws that only permit outdoor smoking (a certain distance away from entryways/exits), have been so effective because of the social incentives they c

I think the laws that only permit outdoor smoking (a certain distance away from entryways/exits), have been so effective because of the social incentives they create. Speaking as an ex-smoker, having to go outside a bar to smoke with the rest of the smoking leper colony, while all your friends are inside having fun without you, is a very powerful social motivator. I honestly feel that this, more than anything else (increased price, graphic health warnings on packets etc.), has been the major contributor to lowered smoking rates. As an aside, I really don't agree with the popular notion that increasing excise (tax) on cigarettes contributes very much to declining rates of smoking. The demand for cigarettes is highly inelastic (i.e. consumers are not very sensitive to changes in price). Heavy taxation of goods with inelastic demand simply results in higher revenue for the government and, eventually, the formation of black markets. Same goes for fuel excise btw: although the (hilarious) justification given is 'road maintenance/user-pays', it is coincidentally another good with highly inelastic demand (making it a pretty efficient tax-base, up to a point). And fuel is such a poor proxy for 'road damage' anyway. EDIT: Also the argument that smokers cause the (public) health-care system to incur additional costs is pretty suspect. Although he's an ultra-right wing nut, and was practically booed off the stage when he made this point, I think Nick Minchin (former leader of the opposition in the Senate) was right when he suggested heavy smokers cost the public health-case system less overall: they tend to die quickly from an acute disease (e.g. lung cancer) at a relatively young age. This means they die before they hit that 'old age' when individual health-care costs sky-rocket.