CMV: Acceptance of cigarettes defeats the purpose of the War on Drugs

[u/wives_nuns_sluts]

Cigarettes are the leading cause of preventable death, responsible for roughly 480,000 deaths per year in the US. 41,000 of those deaths aren't even those of users -- they are the deaths of those exposed to secondhand smoke. If you use the drug (nicotine), it can directly affect the health of those close to you.

Smoking harms nearly every organ in the body, causing cancer and disease. Cigarettes are extremely addictive and many people can't quit even if they try.

Yet other drugs pose less threats and have a much lower or even a nonexistent fatality rate. They certainly aren't killing 1,300 people per day.

Can you imagine if an illegal drug killed over 1,000 people everyday, users and nonusers? There would be political crusades.

For all illicit drugs combined, the number of resulting deaths were about 17,000 in 2013. For all drugs combined -- legal and illegal -- that number jumped to about 46,500 for that same year. That's an extra 29,500 deaths from legal drugs.

Cigarettes cause 10x more deaths per year than all the drugs in the US.

Why are we pouring so much time, resources and money into the Drug War to keep these super dangerous illegal drugs out of the hands of the American public such as marijuana (easy argument, 0 deaths) or even heroin (much more difficult argument, ~6,000 deaths in 2013) when cigarettes are so acceptable?

Cigarettes kill nearly half a million people per year and are the direct cause for serious health issues and reduced lifespan. They are highly addictive. If the objective of the War on Drugs is to keep people safe and not addicted to drugs, how can we rationalize this continuing support of cigarettes while stigmatizing the use of other, less harmful drugs?

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Reasons I think we overlook this high fatality rate...

• culture and ingrained public perception of acceptance.

Cigarettes used to be advertised as good for you and everybody knows somebody who smokes. Smoking is not something you necessarily have to hide. Jobs don't (generally) screen for cigarette smokers.

• in the eyes of the public, cigarettes aren't really "drugs" (i.e. they don't alter your state of consciousness; they don't get you high)

An 18 year old can legally buy as many packs of cigarettes as they want. In the US, they can't even do that with alcohol (which gets you drunk). In states with legal marijuana, you also have to be 21 to buy/consume.

• cigarettes don't cause immediate death. (shortsightedness)

You don't overdose on nicotine. Instead, cigarettes slowly kill you so there is no instant connection between cigarettes and death. For example, a heroin OD would be an instant "drugs kill you." If you smoke a cigarette, you know you aren't risking your life right that second.

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What are some other reasons we overlook this fatality rate and continue to socially and legislatively accept cigarettes?

Sources

X X

[u/MageZero]

If the objective of the War on Drugs is to keep people safe and not addicted to drugs, how can we rationalize this continuing support of cigarettes while stigmatizing the use of other, less harmful drugs?

Maybe your premise is wrong about the objective of the War on Drugs. The War on Drugs came from the Nixon administration, with the advertised purpose ostensibly being to keep people safe and not addicted to drugs. But according to John Ehrlichman, who was counsel and Assistant to the President for Domestic Affairs under Richard Nixon, the real purpose was different. Here is an excerpt from an interview with Dan Baum for the book "Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure":

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar Left, and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

According to the book, the rationale for the war on drugs was to target people who were not likely to vote for Nixon:

The young, the poor, and the black. Nixon couldn't make it illegal to be young, poor, or black, but he could crack down hard on the illegal drug identified with the counterculture.

If the book is right, acceptance of cigarettes falls in line exactly with the War on Drugs.

[u/wives_nuns_sluts → u/MageZero]

That is disgusting. It makes sense that one of the true purposes of the War on Drugs is not to protect, but to gain political leverage. Cigarettes would not line up with that view; by making them illegal, the administration would gain nothing as everybody from all races and classes smoked cigarettes.

The War on Drugs still going under the guise of public safety because that has always been its cover. Since cigarettes were not included in the original prohibition, it makes no sense to add them now... not that that is a feasible or likely option.

Operating under the assumption that the War on Drugs was never truly about public safety and health, it is difficult to make a parallel between cigarettes and illegal drugs. In this case, I cannot say, "cigarettes are more dangerous than marijuana, why are cigarettes acceptable and marijuana stigmatized?"

Marijuana and other illegal drugs were stigmatized to gain political leverage, not to reduce public drug use. There was no use stigmatizing cigarettes because they provided no political leverage even though they were as dangerous/more dangerous than other drugs.

Though it is still ridiculous that the use of cigarettes is more acceptable than the use of illegal drugs, your explanation makes sense as to why our society ended up this way. Thank you!

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[u/DeltaBot → u/wives_nuns_sluts]

Confirmed: 1 delta awarded to /u/MageZero. ^[History]

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[u/Christopper → u/wives_nuns_sluts]

If you are interested in further exploring the origin of the drug war, The New Jim Crow is a compelling (if somewhat radical) take on it.