Cigarettes are responsible for about 480,000 deaths per year. Guns related deaths make up just over 48,000. And about 42,000 for vehicle related deaths.

Honestly, I’m quite surprised, I would’ve guessed that you were correct.

Edit: there is a huge difference though. Most cigarette smokers are self inflicted. As far as second hand smoke, if you can prove damages as a result of it I’m fairly certain you could sue. Enough of that would discourage people from smoking around others without consent. And smoking around your children should be child endangerment.

The things that should be legislated are it’s effects on others, but you should be able to whatever you want to yourself.

As the other user pointed out, cigarettes kill far more Americans than cars or guns. I’m with you on the gun thing. But the car safety stats are always increasing because we do in fact put a huge amount of effort into them - from seat belt laws to firewalls to airbags to automatic braking… there’s too many to name. Now there’s the recent move of making them bigger, harder to stop, and with reduced visibility, so we might see those gains flatten out in the next half decade or so.

We’re also going to start to see a decline in cigarette related deaths as fewer and fewer are smoking them these days. There’s an intersection of public health messaging, government policies on age of access, taxes, and other efforts that are really starting to pay off. I think the e-cigarettes are also helping, but that’s a whole discussion of its own.

So cigarette related deaths are still pretty high, but it will start to fall off. I can’t remember the exact prediction but let’s just call it falling by half in the next decade. Cigarettes are deadly, but they take a long time to kill.

Smokers born in the 40s and 50s are the ones dying from things like cancer and heart disease today, and the replacement rate (new smokers versus loss from people quitting or dying) isn’t working in tobacco’s favor.

Here are some stats.

Because then concern trolls like you will sealion about why we aren’t doing anything about cigarettes instead?

Ever think that those two things kill so much more because anti-smoke laws have been working?