The cigarette industry survives, as does its advertising. Cigarette companies' rights to free speech have, however, been curtailed on grounds of public health, and for the health of children above all. Joe Camel isn't familiar to children today, as he was in the 1970s, because most people agree that it's probably a bad idea to have a hip smoking cartoon character to which kids aspire, even if the company behind it swears blind it was just going after the pro-dromedary slice of the adult market.

Alcohol is similarly circumscribed, again with an eye to public health and, again, with a particular concern for young people. But if public health is a legitimate reason to curb corporations' advertising to kids, why limit bans to cigarettes and booze, and not include, say, unhealthy food?

A paper in the latest issue of Nature by Robert Lustig, Laura Schmidt, and Claire Brindis fuels the debate, pointing to the long-term similarities of sugar and alcohol consumption.

The paper's authors freely admit that a little sugar is fine, but "a lot kills -- slowly." They argue that sugar meets the same four generally accepted public health criteria used to regulate alcohol: it is unavoidable, toxic, has the potential for abuse, and has a negative impact on society. Which is why they suggest restrictions on advertising of sugary processed foods, lauding another of San Francisco's bans -- the one that prevents toys being given away with unhealthy fast food meals.

Given the food industry's power, and fears of a nanny state, it's unsurprising that the paper's authors are caught in a flame war.

I side with the American Psychological Association in thinking that advertising to children is unconscionable. Rather than dwell on the First Amendment issue, which strikes me as an easy case to make, I think it's worth addressing a deeper question underlying the San Francisco cigarette-in-pharmacy ban: Why allow an industry that profits from the sale of unhealthy food at all?

Returning to tobacco is helpful. Stanford historian Robert Proctor's life work has been to expose the lies of the tobacco industry. In his magisterial new book, Golden Holocaust, he makes the case for the abolition of the industry entirely (interview here). Cigarettes, when used according to manufacturer instructions, will lead to death. So why harbor tobacco's peddlers? (This argument, incidentally, won't come as a surprise to R.J. Reynolds, who subpoenaed the manuscript because Proctor had in the past testified as an expert witness against the industry.)

The history of banning things is admittedly inglorious. The war on drugs, Prohibition, and censorship have few fans. There are two reasons why Proctor's proposals are different. First, most smokers don't want to be smokers. "Only about three percent of people who drink are alcoholic," he says. "If smokers could choose freely, then they would choose not to smoke. Nicotine is not a recreational drug.... It's really fundamentally different."