It isn’t necessary to conclude that the benefits of tobacco are not worth the costs for any user, or that no user would continually make a free choice to consume if fully apprised of the facts, to conclude that the tobacco industry should be eventually abolished.
Policymaking inherently paints with a fairly broad brush; it is often not possible to avoid sweeping up some desirable behaviors or events in the scope of a broadly welfare-maximizing policy. As a society, we do not generally require showings that no one would benefit from something before concluding that it should be banned.
The quotes provided so far don’t convince me that SMA is asserting that no one has a free choice, or even that no one receives a net benefit: they assert that “for most smokers” their continued smoking is in contrast with their desire to stop, and “the vast majority of smokers” started as teenagers when they are the most vulnerable to nicotine addiction.
Of the 1⁄3 of smokers who did not express a desire to quit, I wonder how many of them would express a desire to return to smoking if we were to wave a magic wand that cured addiction and associated cognitive distortions and then asked them to make an actually free choice about whether to resume smoking. Cognitive dissonance is quite a drug! I don’t put that much weight on the fact that each smoker decided to start smoking at some prior point in time as evidence of their preferences in a non-addicted state. Unless the smoker decided to partake the first time that cigarettes were a possibility, they also made decisions not to smoke in the past.
There are a number of reasons one might accept that some people would freely choose to continue smoking, yet conclude that an outright ban (eventually) is warranted. For example, one might conclude that only a ban will be sufficiently effective in keeping cigarettes out of the hands of minors, or in protecting society from secondhand smoke. Moreover, even if some people would freely choose to continue smoking, there is no known way to figure out who those people are in advance. Allowing them to discover the alleged joys of nicotine also means others getting trapped in addiction from which they would prefer to escape. There is no known realistic way to abolish only the part of the industry that sells to people who would prefer to be free of their addiction.
It isn’t necessary to conclude that the benefits of tobacco are not worth the costs for any user, or that no user would continually make a free choice to consume if fully apprised of the facts, to conclude that the tobacco industry should be eventually abolished.
Agreed. However, the post as I read it isn’t arguing that stricter regulation of some or all tobacco products is inherently unjustified. It’s postulating that our confidence in the claim that it’s net positive is shakier than the current models make it seem, because SMA and other organizations favoring such regulation are ignoring a major factor when modeling its costs and benefits, namely the enjoyment people get from using the products. It’s one thing to disagree about the extent to which this matters and what weight to assign it in a model; it’s another thing to fail to include it altogether.
Of the 1⁄3 of smokers who did not express a desire to quit, I wonder how many of them would express a desire to return to smoking if we were to wave a magic wand that cured addiction and associated cognitive distortions and then asked them to make an actually free choice about whether to resume smoking. Cognitive dissonance is quite a drug! I don’t put that much weight on the fact that each smoker decided to start smoking at some prior point in time as evidence of their preferences in a non-addicted state. Unless the smoker decided to partake the first time that cigarettes were a possibility, they also made decisions not to smoke in the past.
IMO this is a crux of the disagreement the OP has with SMA’s approach. The concept of addiction is doing a lot of work here in justifying treating smoking as a special case in a way that isn’t applied to less socially stigmatized risks like a dangerous hike or regretted choices the OP mentions like those about social media use and diet. I’d be interested in understanding what you mean by “curing addiction” in this context—would it be something like never having known the pleasure of smoking, adding a moment of mindful reflection before each cigarette, or something else? And how can we tell whether someone is making the choices they are making because they are addicted vs. because they have weighed the pros and cons sufficiently for us to believe they are making a free choice?
Of the 2⁄3 of people who smoke and did express a desire to quit despite not having done so, I also wonder how many of them respond in this way at least in part because of the stigma surrounding smoking (this seems to happen in at least some subpopulations). Social desirability bias is also a hell of a drug.
There is no known realistic way to abolish only the part of the industry that sells to people who would prefer to be free of their addiction.
Do you think there’s a known realistic way to abolish the industry as a whole when more than a billion people in the world smoke daily? If yes, what’s a tractable path given the track record of prohibition of psychoactive substances more generally, and tobacco specifically (e.g. recent bans and subsequent reversals in South Africa and Bhutan)? If not, why is this a reasonable goal for an evidence-driven organization to set, compared to educating the public about the risks of smoking and assisting those who desire to quit, as the OP suggests?
I’d be interested in understanding what you mean by “curing addiction” in this context—would it be something like never having known the pleasure of smoking, adding a moment of mindful reflection before each cigarette, or something else? And how can we tell whether someone is making the choices they are making because they are addicted vs. because they have weighed the pros and cons sufficiently for us to believe they are making a free choice?
I think you’re right that this is a significant crux. It’s a thought experiment (hence “magic wand”), so I don’t think it’s necessary to have a perfect operationalization or measurement criteria here. That being said, I was envisioning that the wand would put smokers in the same position as people who have experienced pleasurable but generally non-addictive events in the past. For example: sex is generally pleasurable, people know it is generally pleasurable, but people aren’t generally addicted to it. If they choose to have sex, even under circumstances where I might think it isn’t the best decision for them, I don’t generally question that this is their free choice.
I expect that, at a minimum, the magic wand would reverse neurobiological changes commonly seen with addictive behavior and would leave the subject with the firm conviction that they could choose to stop without any withdrawal symptoms, cravings, and so on.
The results would be a 2x2 matrix: did the smoker decide to return to smoking after the wand treatment, and did they decide correctly (based on what would make them happier given their own values and preferences?) People make suboptimal decisions all the time—or at least I do! So I do not presume that their choice in thought experiment was the correct one for them. On the other hand, I do want to give their choice significant weight.
Groups 1C and 1E: People who decided to quit smoking. This is estimated as: the 67% who said they wanted to quit, less a downward social-desirability adjustment, plus an upward freedom-from-addiction. One could only speculate on the size of this group, although I think the latter adjustment would swamp the former. I also think very few members of this group would err (by their own values and preferences) in deciding to quit—we will put those people in Group 1E instead of Group 1C.
Group 2E: People who decided not to quit, but would have been happier (by their own values and preferences) had they done so. I would not be inclined to credit an intervention that abolished the tobacco industry as helping members of this group; that strikes me as too paternalistic. But I am also not inclined to count them as having been harmed as a side effect of abolishing the tobacco industry either; by definition they are better off without it. I’ll treat Group 1E the same way for consistency (i.e., weighing the smoker’s actual decision equal to whether they’d actually be happier, and only assigning net harm or benefit when both are in the same direction).
Group 2C: People who decided not to quit, and who would be happier with that decision. These are the only individuals clearly harmed by abolition.
Unfortunately, magic wands don’t exist, and so we can only speculate about the relative sizes of these groups. But if one believes that Group 1C is much larger than the rest (and especially if one believes that Group 2C is pretty small), then accounting for the net costs to Group 2C actually isn’t that important in generating a model.
Do you think there’s a known realistic way to abolish the industry as a whole when more than a billion people in the world smoke daily?
I think SMA’s stated goal is somewhat hyperbolic in the short/medium run, although it might be a realistic goal over something like 75-100 years. For example, public support for proposed generational-ban legislation in the UK appears strong.
If yes, what’s a tractable path given the track record of prohibition of psychoactive substances more generally, and tobacco specifically (e.g. recent bans and subsequent reversals in South Africa and Bhutan)?
Even assuming that a generational ban would be dead on arrival, running an abolitionist campaign has some helpful potential failure modes. First, it could move the Overton window and make it earlier to establish policies that reduce usage levels and/or move usage toward less harmful forms. Second, pushing for a generational ban (e.g., raising the age of legal purchase by one day each day) could get watered down in the legislature to (e.g.) gradually increasing the legal age to the mid-20s, or to imposing a generational ban for only higher-harm products. Those would be massive wins.
In contrast, “educating the public about the risks of smoking and assisting those who desire to quit” sounds a lot like the status quo approach—which has led to over a billion people smoking, most of whom wish they could quit. Governments have already spend quite a bit on educating the public, and the quitting-nicotine market is already quite large (even if its offerings leave much to be desired in terms of efficacy). There’s no reason to think SMA folks would be more skilled at educating people about the harms of nicotine than public health experts, or that they would be better at designing anti-addiction drugs than expert psychopharmacologists whose firms have a massive financial incentive to succeed.
It isn’t necessary to conclude that the benefits of tobacco are not worth the costs for any user, or that no user would continually make a free choice to consume if fully apprised of the facts, to conclude that the tobacco industry should be eventually abolished.
Policymaking inherently paints with a fairly broad brush; it is often not possible to avoid sweeping up some desirable behaviors or events in the scope of a broadly welfare-maximizing policy. As a society, we do not generally require showings that no one would benefit from something before concluding that it should be banned.
The quotes provided so far don’t convince me that SMA is asserting that no one has a free choice, or even that no one receives a net benefit: they assert that “for most smokers” their continued smoking is in contrast with their desire to stop, and “the vast majority of smokers” started as teenagers when they are the most vulnerable to nicotine addiction.
Of the 1⁄3 of smokers who did not express a desire to quit, I wonder how many of them would express a desire to return to smoking if we were to wave a magic wand that cured addiction and associated cognitive distortions and then asked them to make an actually free choice about whether to resume smoking. Cognitive dissonance is quite a drug! I don’t put that much weight on the fact that each smoker decided to start smoking at some prior point in time as evidence of their preferences in a non-addicted state. Unless the smoker decided to partake the first time that cigarettes were a possibility, they also made decisions not to smoke in the past.
There are a number of reasons one might accept that some people would freely choose to continue smoking, yet conclude that an outright ban (eventually) is warranted. For example, one might conclude that only a ban will be sufficiently effective in keeping cigarettes out of the hands of minors, or in protecting society from secondhand smoke. Moreover, even if some people would freely choose to continue smoking, there is no known way to figure out who those people are in advance. Allowing them to discover the alleged joys of nicotine also means others getting trapped in addiction from which they would prefer to escape. There is no known realistic way to abolish only the part of the industry that sells to people who would prefer to be free of their addiction.
Agreed. However, the post as I read it isn’t arguing that stricter regulation of some or all tobacco products is inherently unjustified. It’s postulating that our confidence in the claim that it’s net positive is shakier than the current models make it seem, because SMA and other organizations favoring such regulation are ignoring a major factor when modeling its costs and benefits, namely the enjoyment people get from using the products. It’s one thing to disagree about the extent to which this matters and what weight to assign it in a model; it’s another thing to fail to include it altogether.
IMO this is a crux of the disagreement the OP has with SMA’s approach. The concept of addiction is doing a lot of work here in justifying treating smoking as a special case in a way that isn’t applied to less socially stigmatized risks like a dangerous hike or regretted choices the OP mentions like those about social media use and diet. I’d be interested in understanding what you mean by “curing addiction” in this context—would it be something like never having known the pleasure of smoking, adding a moment of mindful reflection before each cigarette, or something else? And how can we tell whether someone is making the choices they are making because they are addicted vs. because they have weighed the pros and cons sufficiently for us to believe they are making a free choice?
Of the 2⁄3 of people who smoke and did express a desire to quit despite not having done so, I also wonder how many of them respond in this way at least in part because of the stigma surrounding smoking (this seems to happen in at least some subpopulations). Social desirability bias is also a hell of a drug.
Do you think there’s a known realistic way to abolish the industry as a whole when more than a billion people in the world smoke daily? If yes, what’s a tractable path given the track record of prohibition of psychoactive substances more generally, and tobacco specifically (e.g. recent bans and subsequent reversals in South Africa and Bhutan)? If not, why is this a reasonable goal for an evidence-driven organization to set, compared to educating the public about the risks of smoking and assisting those who desire to quit, as the OP suggests?
I think you’re right that this is a significant crux. It’s a thought experiment (hence “magic wand”), so I don’t think it’s necessary to have a perfect operationalization or measurement criteria here. That being said, I was envisioning that the wand would put smokers in the same position as people who have experienced pleasurable but generally non-addictive events in the past. For example: sex is generally pleasurable, people know it is generally pleasurable, but people aren’t generally addicted to it. If they choose to have sex, even under circumstances where I might think it isn’t the best decision for them, I don’t generally question that this is their free choice.
I expect that, at a minimum, the magic wand would reverse neurobiological changes commonly seen with addictive behavior and would leave the subject with the firm conviction that they could choose to stop without any withdrawal symptoms, cravings, and so on.
The results would be a 2x2 matrix: did the smoker decide to return to smoking after the wand treatment, and did they decide correctly (based on what would make them happier given their own values and preferences?) People make suboptimal decisions all the time—or at least I do! So I do not presume that their choice in thought experiment was the correct one for them. On the other hand, I do want to give their choice significant weight.
Groups 1C and 1E: People who decided to quit smoking. This is estimated as: the 67% who said they wanted to quit, less a downward social-desirability adjustment, plus an upward freedom-from-addiction. One could only speculate on the size of this group, although I think the latter adjustment would swamp the former. I also think very few members of this group would err (by their own values and preferences) in deciding to quit—we will put those people in Group 1E instead of Group 1C.
Group 2E: People who decided not to quit, but would have been happier (by their own values and preferences) had they done so. I would not be inclined to credit an intervention that abolished the tobacco industry as helping members of this group; that strikes me as too paternalistic. But I am also not inclined to count them as having been harmed as a side effect of abolishing the tobacco industry either; by definition they are better off without it. I’ll treat Group 1E the same way for consistency (i.e., weighing the smoker’s actual decision equal to whether they’d actually be happier, and only assigning net harm or benefit when both are in the same direction).
Group 2C: People who decided not to quit, and who would be happier with that decision. These are the only individuals clearly harmed by abolition.
Unfortunately, magic wands don’t exist, and so we can only speculate about the relative sizes of these groups. But if one believes that Group 1C is much larger than the rest (and especially if one believes that Group 2C is pretty small), then accounting for the net costs to Group 2C actually isn’t that important in generating a model.
I think SMA’s stated goal is somewhat hyperbolic in the short/medium run, although it might be a realistic goal over something like 75-100 years. For example, public support for proposed generational-ban legislation in the UK appears strong.
Even assuming that a generational ban would be dead on arrival, running an abolitionist campaign has some helpful potential failure modes. First, it could move the Overton window and make it earlier to establish policies that reduce usage levels and/or move usage toward less harmful forms. Second, pushing for a generational ban (e.g., raising the age of legal purchase by one day each day) could get watered down in the legislature to (e.g.) gradually increasing the legal age to the mid-20s, or to imposing a generational ban for only higher-harm products. Those would be massive wins.
In contrast, “educating the public about the risks of smoking and assisting those who desire to quit” sounds a lot like the status quo approach—which has led to over a billion people smoking, most of whom wish they could quit. Governments have already spend quite a bit on educating the public, and the quitting-nicotine market is already quite large (even if its offerings leave much to be desired in terms of efficacy). There’s no reason to think SMA folks would be more skilled at educating people about the harms of nicotine than public health experts, or that they would be better at designing anti-addiction drugs than expert psychopharmacologists whose firms have a massive financial incentive to succeed.