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Tobacco Companies Banning Cigarettes

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In today’s modern world, cigarettes have become something of a phenomenon. They plague the earth’s environment, they cause a steady incline in the healthcare spending of countries ever year, and they bring death and harm to those that use them. Yet, cigarettes remain a big part of both American society and the world at large. Why? Well, it has everything to do with the big name tobacco companies that loom over every country’s economy and the little effort put into counteracting their efforts to destroy young, malleable minds. Cigarettes should be banned legally, because cigarette companies get too much economic and legal power from their products, the costs of cigarettes far outweigh the benefits, and spending on prevention programs does not …show more content…

Such is the case of the Embargo Act the US has on Iran. Enforced by OFAC (the office of Foreign Assets Control, a branch from the US Department of Treasury), the US uses it to find out the political stability of a nation and see what its weaknesses are. However, OFAC often gives special licenses to tobacco companies to sell their products in those countries, and this gives these companies too much power both nationally and internationally (Batmanghelidj 8). Tobacco companies then use these unfair advantages to get a leg up over other companies economically, even though it is technically illegal. Of course, big tobacco companies like Phillip Morris and Reynolds American make their money from selling to countries where around 24% of the population smokes, so it makes sense for the American government to want to keep them active so that America’s own economy is bolstered at the cos of other countries (Batmanghelidj 8). The problem then becomes, is it moral to sell life-threatening narcotics to other countries in order to boost the American economy? America itself has always debated whether or not to legally ban cigarettes, and most of the debate comes from the thriving tobacco business that lays down reasons to keep tobacco, while the general population clamors for a legal ban on the little boxes full of carcinogens to be …show more content…

And, frankly, they are backed by factual evidence showing prevention works. For instance, The California Tobacco Program was studied between when it was created in 1989 and 2008 to find the relationship between the cost of the program and per capita health costs. Using the National Income and Product Accounts measure of healthcare spending, it was found that 2.4 billion dollars were used on the program in those 19, bringing savings of up to 134 billion dollars in health expenses (Lightwood). Therefore, every billion dollars spent on prevention methods saved the Californian economy about 56 billion dollars in health expenses and allowing it to allocate the saved money to useful expenditures such as education and community development. Prevention can also take the form of raising tax prices on cigars so they can be less appealing to consumers. For instance, The World Bank, an international financial institution dedicated to ending poverty in developing counties, estimates that raising cigarette prices through taxes by 10 percent would decrease the number of smokers in the world by 42 million, and save around 10 million lives (Tobacco 1). This is because many of the world’s smokers are low-income gaining adults and/or teenagers whom cannot afford a price increase, and therefore, they might stop smoking. In fact,

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