Prohibition didn't work with alcohol and doesn't work with recreational drugs, so why would it work with tobacco? In the end adults must be left to choose their own consumption of pornography, gambling, prostitution, alcohol and other drugs and vices.

Even though I'm another 'passionate non-smoker' I also disagree with Paul Biegler.

After years of suffering the effects of smokers' nicotine addiction I celebrate total restrictions on the public use of tobacco. However, we should not go beyond Mill's "harm" principle.

Any attempt to impose a ban on the use cigarettes would result in similar debacles to Prohibition in the US and the current "war on drugs". Why would the social and economic consequences of criminalising nicotine be any different from banning marijuana, cocaine, heroin or any other recreational drug? Drug use is a public health problem, so instead of banning cigarettes we should decriminalise the use of all current illicit drugs.

The Conversation has a party line, as much as an Andrew Bolt or Quadrant - smoking should eventually be banned, gay marriage is good, carbon pricing is effective, we need government intervention to tackle obesity.

I often agree with the Conversation's take on the world. But it doesn't make very thought-provoking or challenging reading. You read the headline and ... ho-hum.

It's a shame that some people in our society must be the subject to the rampant self-righteousness of so-called passionate non-smokers. The way in which Biegler and others regard those people who choose to smoke cigarettes is both unwarranted, offensive and ultimately without sound context.
This commentary has an ideologically structured argument around what is actually a health issue for both smokers and non-smokers. Addiction of any kind is a health issue, not a moral one, and a discussion around adequate and effective services, and an informed response from the medical profession to addiction, are all related issues which are never touched upon in the diatribes from the anti-smoking lobby.
Beyond health issues, there are a whole raft of social and broader issues related to substance abuse, which then widens the field far beyond just cigarette smoking to alcohol, gambling, pornography, debt, the list goes on.
It affects my health when I have abuse directed at me by an intoxicated person, or I need to provide support to people I know who's lives are profoundly affected by someone else's drinking. Does this mean I want to stop you from having a schooner at your local pub? No way.
I'm disappointed The Conversation has allowed this kind of reductionist self interest into what is an excellent forum for discussion and learning.

Where are all the economists? It is a factual certainty that the government cannot physically stop people smoking. No matter what the taxes, how severe the penalty, a ban on cigarettes will result in more harm than good. Cigarettes will become stronger and more harmful, be sold to more children and very likely will be consumed by more people in greater quanatities.

When will reason and science become the norm for public policy? Every economist can tell you that banning something lowers the supply only, not the demand, and hence prices and therefore profits increase. Ever heard of Al Capone? Examine the stellar success of banning all the other "recreational drugs". Most of them can be bought with a few minutes looking. The evidence is in: banning does not stop the use of drugs.

Let's detail the consequences of Dr Biegler's recommendations:

. When prohibition comes into force between 15 and 20 % of Australia’s adult population will require nicotine in their daily wellbeing. If the government tries to supply that requirement through nicotine patches, the pharma companies that supply that product will be able to name their price. That will either require a massive government subsidy to meet the need, or price controls leading to reduced supply. If that happens, others will need to meet customers’ demand illegally, making both the suppliers and the buyers criminals.

. any unmet demand in any market will be supplied, no matter what. Under prohibition in Australia it will be supplied by .... criminals. Criminal networks already supply the Australian market with about 10% of its tobacco. The idea they can't ramp this up to meet 100% of the demand is naive.

. a captive, illegal market, supplied by criminals, attracts competition to earn the profits available from supplying such a market. Criminals compete among each other for market share of an illegal product with .... violence. We know this from the war on drugs. Thus the tobacco market becomes simultaneously lucrative for criminals and violent under prohibition.

. Police are attracted - naturally - to confront the violence inherent in competition for market share in an illegal trade. Drawing police in to the fight has two effects: a) it increases daily police surveillance of ordinary trade to garner intelligence in the fight against illegal tobacco trade and b) diverts police resources towards combating the violence of the tobacco trade away from other civil order priorities like urban assaults, rape, domestic violence etc.

. Much of the illegal trade will be, initially, supplied from China. CNTC - the Chinese state tobacco monopoly - is as big as the multinational tobacco companies combined. You hear a lot about the evils of Phillip Morris and British American, but how many of you know that CNTC is the world's number 1 tobacco company? It's also the world's no. 1 smuggler. So the product being supplied to Australian addicts will not be not disclosed (like current products) and probably full of even more harmful carcinogens than current products (so much for health outcomes). Also, have you ever read CNTC’s annual report? No. It doesn’t exist. Phillip Morris’s does. Google it. Discern the difference, because Simon Chapman won’t tell you.

. Illegal imports would require a police response along the supply chain.

. First, in the form of higher customs surveillance of imported shipping containers. With mandatory prohibition, intercepting tobacco shipments would be a number one priority of Australian Customs. The increased intervention of the millions of containers arriving at Australian ports a year would increase customs costs and decrease release times, making imports and thus retail goods more expensive and slower to arrive. Fancy waiting 2 weeks longer for your new Harvey Norman sofa, and paying $1000 more? Thank prohibition.

. Secondly, competition for market share attracts local competitors, like poorer Australian farmers attracted to growing tobacco and selling to local criminal consortia. "Chop chop" tobacco already exists - its volume would only grow under prohibition. Deterring farmers from growing tobacco in order to validate prohibition would oblige police surveillance of Australian agriculture on an unprecedented scale. Militarized SWAT teams, auditing Australian farms to determine if they're growing 'legal" crops"? Sounds like a great future (not).

. Intensifying demands on police resources to enforce prohibition require either trade-offs from other civil order priorities or higher taxes. Sounds good?

. The health outcomes from prohibition? Assume Action on Smoking and Health is right and 15000 die from smoking related diseases a year. The casualties are 60-70 years old, so if they don't die of lung cancer in that cohort they will die of congestive heart failure, stroke, or other cancers between the 70-80 cohort or those or Alzheimer-type causes in the 80-90 cohort. They'll impose far greater public health costs along the way (not that that matters). And they'll accumulate, what? 10 -15 quality years in extra life? Maybe, but only if they a) stop smoking immediately and b) live out the longer part of the health curve for long time smokers.

. So we're talking about turning 15-20% of the adult population into criminals with untold billions in direct public expenditure costs from policing, customs, and social costs from greater local violence, against a small percentage of people who may or may not change their behaviour to mitigate the very direct social impact of prohibition. At the same time, we confront higher taxes for enforcement of the law, militarised surveillance of agriculture and retail trade (at a minimum), inevitable tragedies from police mistakes killing innocents (which ALWAYS happen) in their zeal to enforce the new law, and massive profit opportunities for criminal networks to supplant the profits that currently go to companies regulated by the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

The most compelling argument against prohibition I can think of is this: in 1920, after 50 years of civil and religious pressure and advocacy, America passed a Constitutional emandment prohibiting the sale and distribution of alcohol. It took 2/3 majorities of the House and Senate and majority votes of citizens in 30+ States to ratify it. Within a decade, that remarkable consensus in favour of prohibition had completely reversed itself. Imagine how hard it is to get 100 million people to change their mind completely in one decade. The experience of prohibition must have been so totally awful, so unimaginably different to what they imagined, that its reversal became the only sensible course. All of the things I've outlined - murder, criminalisation of the citizen, daily violence, police power abuse, farmer criminalisation, tax increases to fund new police agencies (like the FBI), and no discernible improvement in public health - all happened during prohibition of alcohol. Americans entered it thinking they had ushered in a new age of Enlightenment. Within ten years they’d had a brutal lesson in the limits of human action. Since its repeal, American alcohol consumption trails its Western contemporaries, but its public health outcomes are no better.

Tobacco is a problem. But Professor Biegler is hopelessly naïve, or ignorant of the consequences or the history of similar efforts, to advocate prohibition as a solution.

If people want to smoke that is their choice and not for the rest of us to ban.

Where is all this going?

People should have the right to smoke if they want to, and people who disaprove should just avoid them if they're bothered by it. We all pay taxes so one group of people shouldn't have precedence over anyone else. Not to mention the fact that there are only a few places now where people can smoke - so it's hardly like the streets are over-run with smokers.If they ever do ban smoking entirely (which is highly unlikely considering the VAT charged), then they also should ban vehicles as the fumes produced by a car causes far more polution than a measly cigarette. Not to mention banning fast food and alcoholic beverages!

I am a non-smoker but the anti-smokers have gone too far. If people want to smoke that is their business, they know the risks and should be left alone. The anti-smokers exaggerate the effect of smoking around others and should be put in their place.