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The costs and benefits of a cigarette ban
  1. Mathieu Doucet
  1. Correspondence to Dr Mathieu Doucet, Department of Philosophy, University of Waterloo, 200 University Ave West, Waterloo, ON N2L 3G1, Canada; mdoucet{at}uwaterloo.ca

Abstract

The death toll from tobacco is staggering: it might contribute to one billion premature deaths over the course of the 21st century. In ‘The case for banning cigarettes’, Kalle Grill and Kristin Voigt argue that the well-being and equality benefits of a complete ban on cigarettes more than justify the restrictions on autonomy that such a ban would impose. Their argument depends on two crucial simplifications: an assumption that the ban would be effective and the restriction of the analysis to a comparison with the status quo, rather than a broader range of policy options. I argue that despite the authors’ claims, these two simplifications make it impossible for their argument to ‘bring into focus the fundamental normative issues’ surrounding a possible cigarette ban, since they dramatically overstate the benefits and obscure the most significant costs of such a ban.

  • Ethics
  • Autonomy
  • Substance Abusers/Users of Controlled Substances
  • Public Health Ethics

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Footnotes

  • Twitter Follow Mathieu Doucet @WM_Doucet

  • Funding Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Insight Development Grant).

  • Competing interests None declared.

  • Provenance and peer review Not commissioned; internally peer reviewed.