If smoking is so dangerous, then why is it legal?
In the United States, we need to remember that tobacco was our cash crop as a beginning nation. The tobacco industry forming around that, primarily in the South-East, worked with our legislators to protect tobacco, especially at the point where the Food and Drug administration legislation went through - tobacco was excluded as not a drug and not a food. So therefore it has been totally outside of the realm of control by appropriate health authorities through all these years. It is legal because it has assumed a role as a product that someone uses just because they like it, because it's a habit, something you can quit anytime you want. The tobacco industry specifically denied for decades that it created addiction even though their own research showed unequivocally that it was an addictive substance.