If smoking generates external costs, should smoking simply be outlawed? how about cars that pollute?

Despite the economic loss, the government charges high tobacco taxes, which ultimately generates a certain profit. In addition, tobacco is a drug that does not impede the productivity of the individual.

The auto industry has created devices and even cars that pollute less or pollute to a lesser extent. In addition, cars also generate profit for the government.

Explanation:

There are two types of drugs: those that allow the user a productive life and those that cause physical / psychological damage, reducing the individual to a state of social morbidity and rapid death. The cigarette represents the first group, and the addiction it generates does not immediately incapacitate the worker, taking years before the damage is lethal. But because the effect of addiction is strong and the smoke inhaled is highly carcinogenic, the taxes charged by the government are very high on the merchandise. That is, the government earns in the absurd taxes levied on the tobacco industry and continues to earn the taxes of the chemically dependent but still efficient worker. For this reason, tobacco will never be prohibited.

In addition, currently produced cars have devices to less pollute the environment. There are prototypes of cars that pollute in insignificant quantities and the tendency is that greener cars are designed. Like cigarettes, cars make a big profit for the government.

panem is a communist totalitarian dictatorship where all the resources and how they are allocated belongs to the capitol. the districts exist only to provide goods and services for the capital and most of the citizens live in poverty. it is a police state where the "peacekeepers" use force and threats to keep the people under control. dissent is outlawed and those who disobey the law are executed, flogged, or turned into avoxes. the games are another means in which the ruling elite in the capitol exert their power over the districts. when reading the books i drew parallels between panem and the soviet union and north korea. in no way is panem capitalist. the people in the capitol are wealthy but the majority of them are involved in the government somehow. it was the same way in the former soviet union where bigwigs in the communist party and high ranking government officials were given access to goods, services, medical treatments not available to the general public. if you think panem has a capitalist economy you need to brush up on your economics.