But Stanford history of science professor Robert Proctor doesn't think our laws go far enough. In fact, he doesn't think any laws that don't completely abolish the manufacture and sale of cigarettes go far enough.
"We ban all kinds of things," Proctor said to Q host Jian Ghomeshi recently. "We ban lead paint, we ban children's toys that can be swallowed, we ban asbestos insulation, and in Canada, I guess, we even ban electronic cigarettes. But the really big killer...the biggest killer in the history of human civilization, we actually tolerate."
In his new book Golden Holocaust: Origins of the Cigarette Catastrophe and the Case for Abolition, Proctor argues that people should have the right to smoke, but that the multi-billion-dollar tobacco industry should go up in smoke for selling a "product that has all kinds of the world of filth in it."
