Should cigarettes be made illegal?

The difference is that cigarettes do not offer anything besides death. Cars, barbecues, campfires, fireplaces and furnaces all have a purpose. They bring you from one place to another, feed you, brings a little warmth in your house when it's cold, etc.

Unless we're talking about carelessness ( ex: using a barbecue inside your home ), I highly doubt there have been many deaths directly related to barbecues, campfires, fireplaces and furnaces.

As for cars, however, I would agree with you. Cars sure are an important cause for pollution. But then again, are we willing to lose the luxury we have been living in for the past decades thanks to motorized transportation? If we ban all gas-fueled cars now, in a time when we have yet to adapt to more planet-friendly measures, it would be a gigantic step back for mankind as a whole. The worldwide economy that we currently depend on would collapse and the ensuing collateral damages would probably plunge humanity into some sort of post-apocalyptic era.

I don't think the same would happen if we banned cigarettes today.

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention - Leading causes of death

World Health Organisation - Leading causes of death

As you can see, the three major causes of death in the US and the around the world ( Heart disease, cancer and chronic respiratory diseases ) are all cigarette-related. Of course, smoking is not the cause of all the deaths listed in these statistics, but it gives a pretty good glimpse of how devastating cigarette smoking can be. Passive smoking is more difficult to pinpoint and tobacco companies know this, so they use the same kind of argument you use: "It's your life, your choice, no one gets to decide for you, it's all about freedom!", but the reality is that the smoke doesn't change whether you inhale it first or not. The chemicals remain the same, and it does go from one person's lungs to another if they are close enough. You claim the harm is minimal. I tend to disagree.

My uncle worked for many years in a smoker-friendly environment back when second-hand smoking wasn't really an issue for most people. Some years ago, he went to see the doctor because he was coughing a lot. He did some tests and then the first thing his doctor asked him was "Do you smoke?". It was discovered that he had throat cancer despite the fact that he never smoked a single cigarette in his entire life. They discovered he had the same kind of damaged lungs a regular smoker has. He had to quit his job and everything he was involved with (he was a very active person in his community), had to undergo chemotherapy treatments and had to get an operation. I now encourage you to calculate the monetary and, perhaps even more importantly, the human cost passive smoking had on my uncle and his family and multiply that by a few hundred thousands to get an idea of how much of an impact passive smoking has on the world. Luckily, my uncle lives in Canada where most of the medical treatments are covered by government insurance, but think of a similar scenario in a country where they don't offer such a thing. According to the World Health Organisation, more than 600 000 people die prematurely every year because of passive smoking.

When you enter your car every morning, you don't hit the gas pedal knowing that you're going to die at the end of the road and possibly take other lives along the way. Smoking cigarettes, on the other hand, is exactly what I just described.

I can see where to draw the line with all that in mind.