I think it was the prime minister (or spokesperson) who made this very clever argument: (paraphrasing) “we are not taking away choice… cigarettes are designed to inherently take away your choice by trapping you in an addiction.”
I’m not picking sides here, just pointing out a great piece of rhetoric to spin the policy as taking away something that takes away your choice. Effectively putting forward the idea that you don’t have choice to begin with.
(sorry to say this rhetoric was not mentioned in the linked article; I just heard it on BBC World Service)
So do we ban strong spirits and leave beer alone then too?
That’s a more nuanced issue, but I will say that in the US and Europe to my knowledge there are often more restrictions on spirits than on wine and beer including where it can be sold and in Europe, the age at which it can be purchased. I’m not sure about the rest of the world, but that is a very significant portion of the world for an English language discussion.
Regardless, that comparison isn’t quite right assuming we’re talking about cigarettes being hard spirits and weed being beer. With hard spirits they’re very harsh and in typical use they’re poured in smaller amounts and diluted with mixers to bring them around the strength of a beer. Even when drank neat they’re still served in smaller quantities and drank more slowly by most people.
On the other hand cigarettes are usually filtered which makes them smoother to smoke while weed is rarely filtered and people are much more likely to cough as an immediate reaction to smoking too much which also discourages smoking in excess.