Reply #11: I'm afraid da Zombie may be right...

[SteveM]

And you might be "right" as well. There is a distinct move to make smoking tobacco illegal in all public places, and it would seem that includes outdoor public places. (I believe 2 California cities do this now.) In Austin, TX., well-funded adds now show a truck "fumigating" people with smoke as the announcer piles on the "data" about how second-hand smoking is dangerous. And the places where actor-people are coughing? ALL OUTDOOR places; parks, jogging trails, benches, etc. If this is the case, the anti-tobacco people may very be trying to place tobacco into a hazy prohibitionist status, along with pot-smoking. It depends on which government-enforced compromise you want to go with. A ban on cigarette-smoking extending could into one's residence if children live there, using the assistance of various state child-protection services agencies, which seem open to social engineering schemes. If this kind of prohibition comes about you will have:

(1) Criminalization (the most satisfying aspect to prohibitionists);
(2) Smuggling and the attendant expenditure of public resources and the crime which acretes from prohibition; and
(3) Loss of tax revenue as people go for smuggled or hot-house dope... I mean tobacco.

Note that cigarette smuggling has gone up considerably the last time I looked.
BTW, "taxation" is an alternative way to spell "prohibition."