Smoking and Tobacco


Cigarette smoking is the single greatest preventable cause of death in the world. One of the firm ethical concepts of most, if not all societies, is that prevention is better than cure. When it comes to smoking, most countries are faced by an ethical paradox: while many decades of research have provided incontrovertible evidence of the hazards of cigarette smoking, the tobacco industry still flourishes, often with either tacit or overt government support. The ethics of smoking is made even more serious by alarming revelations about the cancer deaths and other health risks caused by second-hand smoke.

We believe that the ethics of prevention requires in every country a uniform ban on all tobacco advertising, stricter laws prohibiting smoking in non-residential public places, more aggressive and systematic public education, and substantially higher taxes on cigarettes. These measures would save millions of lives every year.
