The end, unfortunately, doesn't justify the means

The end, unfortunately, doesn't justify the means

"If cancer is bringing our health insurance systems to their knees (to say nothing of the agony and anguish implied in that volume of slow, painful death), should we unleash another form of smoking on the public, or should we do something positive and permanent about the existing forms?"

Well cancer is, for the most part, due to the success of "modern" medicine and general public hygiene. Before we got things like vaccines and cleaner food and water we tended to die earlier. We have to die of something... so the longer we live the more likely it is that we will die of cancer or stroke. By your logic we should prohibit tobacco smoking even more so than it is... to the point of criminalizing it. Do you think that it would have a large effect on public health... worth the cost?

-DU-