The government doesn't want people to quit smoking
because they make lots of money from it.
I know people who work in research funded by the
government(feds and provincial). These peoples job is to figure out how to put
more nicotine in cigarettes and reduce the tar content so that people will smoke
more and not have as many health problems. Canada is the only country that I
know of where it is legal for the cigarette people to artificially add nicotine
to cigarettes. Not only this but they fund research so hopefully, they can add
even more.
The government appeases people like you by taxing
the daylights out of the things and they make more and more money at the same
time. The only way that the government can lose is if they are illegal and they
lose that revenue. Then people will pay the same or higher prices for illegal
cigarettes and the government won't get their cut. On the positive side the
illegal cigarettes will be less addictive because they won't come from Canada.
Do you see how approaching the problem from this
direction could be futile? They must be literally forced into losing that
revenue. Then they will have to make up the loss in revenue by demonising
something else. They will probably target booze, gasoline and a number of
other sins to let the population as a whole pay for the void left from their
lost tobacco income.
The other point to consider is that we are
seriously overpopulated(by any natural standard) and could use a little culling
to thin out the ranks. Smoking does this well. The best thing we can do for
the world is get rid of ourselves.