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Is that what we should expect in the unlikely event that cigarettes are someday outlawed? Personally, I suspect it wouldn't be that way at all. Again, unlike alcohol or marijuana, outlawing tobacco doesn't hinder anyone's ability to take in nicotine, it would just force people to find a new way to enjoy it. People would have to work their way through all manner of nicotine replacement products (gum, patches, e-cigarettes, weed) before finally deciding that a pack of Newports are worth breaking the law over. Will those people exist? Sure, but there won't be a lot of them.

Now, I do admit, this is a plan that does have some inherent drawbacks. For one, smoking always looks rad in pictures.



That's the closest I've been to a church in over three decades. Surprise!

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So our profile pictures will surely suffer, but that's what Photoshop is for.



See? We'll still have fun!

Also, if you work in an office but aren't a smoker, what's the point in even taking a break? So you can go hate life while sitting in a different part of the office? Might as well stay at your desk. Not so with smokers. They cherish breaks. They look forward to them. They make them count. A ban on cigarettes will be a huge bummer for anyone in that group who can't make peace with using a vaporizer, but, again, that's going to be a small minority. Also, in time they'll realize it wasn't a cigarette they wanted during those breaks after all, but rather the desire to be outside and away from work for a few minutes. You don't need cigarettes for that, just go outside and walk around.

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In general, though, people would adjust. There'd still be nicotine, it just wouldn't be wrapped in tar and rat poison. After a few years, rather than cleaning up alcohol prohibition-style bloodbaths on the regular, I suspect most of us will have just forgotten that cigarettes were ever a thing we "needed."

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For more from Adam, check out 5 Recent Trends That Make It Hard to Trust the Police and 5 Everyday Activities That Should Require a License.

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