It’s worth pointing out that tobacco use is currently declining. It kills a lot of people yes, but most of the deaths are distributed towards older populations.

It’s worth pointing out that tobacco use is currently declining. It kills a lot of people yes, but most of the deaths are distributed towards older populations. Combine these two factors, and you’d expect tobacco deaths to slide in the next few decades as we start running out of older smokers and newer generations smoke less on average than their parents did. On the other hand opiate addiction came out of nowhere, and surpassed vehicle related deaths before anyone noticed. It kills much more randomly, and the problem seems to be getting worse. Expecting opioid death numbers to get worse in the near future isn’t unreasonable. It wouldn’t surprise me if opioids end up killing more per capita than nicotine does in the near future. Also, there’s a pretty stark difference between the impact on life of these two substances aside from the mortality risk. While smoking does reduce quality of life, not many people end up in jail or homeless because of their nicotine addiction.