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)
Smoking habits are vastly different between the two. THC has strong inhibiting effects so must people will usually smoke smaller quantities (often just a quarter of a gram) and will probably do it as a way of unwinding after work or share a joint with friends when they’re hanging out. Nicotine on the other hand isn’t inhibiting and if anything can give a little boost. Because of this someone can smoke a whole cigarette and go about their day at work. Often times taking multiple breaks during the work day. Tolerance also builds up very quickly and there are significantly stronger addictive effects which often leads to people smoking several cigarettes a day even when they aren’t getting the effects while the practice of taking tolerance breaks is pretty common even with heavy weed smokers since there isn’t any real withdrawal. Sure there are people that smoke multiple joints a day, but there are also people that smoke a pack or more of cigarettes a day and they’re able to stay much more functional while doing so which means that there isn’t the negative feedback you’d get from being stoned all the time.
All of that would hold true if both substances were equally toxic. However studies show that weed is far far less carcinogenic than tobacco. It’s not healthy to smoke anything, but what you smoke and how much does matter.
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.