@Finn dAbuzz,
Quote:And when tobacco smokers ignore the obvious risks of their habit someone else is to blame.
There's always someone else to blame, never the poor hapless individuals who need the government to care for them.
Yes, modern smokers are to some degree responsible for their behavior because the health effects are now well known. That was not the case in the sixties and seventies and earlier because the AMA had not yet established its educational initiative and because the tobacco companies purposefully hid that health data, which they already knew, and established a multi-million dollar PR campaign to cast doubts on the known science so their profits wouldn't suffer. And meanwhile, they were developing ways to make their products even more addictive.
That individual smoker bears a responsibility for himself/herself - that is, one person. The tobacco companies bear responsibility for millions or billions of people sick and dying or dead because of their product.
And you want the moral/ethical focus to be on the individual who has been purposefully addicted to the product? That is not a sustainable moral position. But you appear to be led to it by an axiomatic formulation that even where such undeniably horrible health consequences arise from a profit-making enterprise's activities or products, it would be worse for the community if that community's government moved to regulate the sale and distribution of the product.
