If you are a smoker, this won’t be a well-liked article. But unlike the preacher who makes you listen to him rant and rave for one hour before “coming to a close,” I’ll give you the end of my soliloquy now. I think it’s time to ban cigarettes altogether.

I had thrown a press release into the trash when I suffered a delayed reaction from something I read just a few minutes earlier.  The headline which literally stopped me in my tracks stated: “Candy and Fruit Flavored Cigarettes Now Illegal in United States; Step is First Under New Tobacco Law.”  It was enough to take my mind back to another case involving cigarettes that is currently in the news.

It seems that Rodney Morrison, a crack dealer from New York, left the game in 1993 to legitimize himself in the tax-free cigarettes industry. He opened a shop on an Indian Reservation and within 10 years, became one of New York’s biggest dealers in untaxed cigarettes. Two years ago, one in every seven packs sold in New York state came from either Morrison’s shop or three others on the reservation—all run by former drug dealers.

Morrison, a Black man, was convicted of illegally cigarette trafficking although the business, legally established on the reservation, at one point grossed $172 million in just under five years. But Morrison is just a bit player in an industry that in the first quarter of 2009, saw sales plunge by 19.3 percent. Yet, as recent as 2006, U.S. sales were estimated to be a staggering $49 billion.

Last week, when the ban on cigarettes containing certain characterizing flavors went into effect, it was authorized by the new Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, part of an effort by the Federal Drug Administration to reduce smoking in America. The release read, “The FDA’s ban on candy and fruit-flavored cigarettes highlights the importance of reducing the number of children who start to smoke, and who become addicted to dangerous tobacco products. FDA is also examining options for regulating both menthol cigarettes and flavored tobacco products other than cigarettes.”

The problem, which is unique to the tobacco industry is that they make a product which guarantees addiction of the end user, also almost guarantees death. And since the manufacturers have a “dying” pool of consumers, they have to try everything they can to entice new consumers.   According to studies, 17-year- old smokers are three times as likely to use flavored cigarettes as compared to those over the age of 25.

“Flavored cigarettes attract and allure kids into lifetime addiction,” said U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Assistant Secretary for Health Howard K. Koh, M.D., M.P.H. “The FDA’s ban on these cigarettes will break that cycle for the more than 3,600 young people who start smoking daily.”

That’s 1,314,000 new users every year. Before you say, they are only hurting themselves, you must realize that tobacco use accounts for one out of every seven Medicaid dollars spent by the States. “Reducing the number of smokers in the United States could save taxpayers billions of dollars in Medicaid costs,” said Justin Trogdon, Ph.D., an RTI International health economist in a 2007 report. “Policy makers looking for ways to reduce health care costs in America would be wise to look at areas of health behaviors that both improve health and reduce health care costs.” By the way, New York topped the list with its smokers costing Medicaid $1.5 billion each year.

Maybe it’s time that instead of just forcing the cigarette manufacturers to stop being cute, we should seriously consider shutting the industry down. After all, it is estimated by the American Cancer Society and World Lung Foundation, that by 2015, at least 2.1 million people will die each year because of tobacco-induced cancers. That’s 700 times the number of the people who died in the World Trade Centers on Sept. 11, 2001. Why aren’t people more concerned? Oh yeah, 9-11 cost us a few lives and some money. The tobacco industry cost us a lot of lives, but we make money.