If you switch off the TV and start to use your your own brain to think with you will come up with some disturbing facts.
1/ Exhaust emissions are very deadly and you probably breath far more vehicle exhaust emissions in a given week than cigarette emissions. Just consider the thought experiment of spending an hour in a closed room with 30 chain smokers, or that same hour with one small car with its engine running. The car would kill you in about 5 minutes. Add to this the disturbing fact that catalytic converters were added to cars because of the toxic nature of unleaded fuel ( they add industrial wastes to it ) And that these converters have a lifespan of 3 years. Ever know anyone to have changed one out? No. There over $1000 to replace. As an experiment I emailed BP once, told them I was running an old car on unleaded and asked them if I needed to have a converter fitted. No reply.
2/ Tobacco companies don't make the most profit from tobacco, neither does the government. The biggest profits go to the Medical industry. I'm not talking about treatments either, I'm talking about direct profits from the use of tobacco in gums and patches. They pay no excise and the market for them is huge. They have a vested economic interest in scaring people into switching to their products and often, as in the case of gums, people use them for years and years after quitting.
Sure smoking is bad for your health, but so is sitting on you backside eating too much food and not exercising until you become obease and can't run across your backyard without getting winded. Smoking is bad for you but so is drinking diet coke. Diet Coke has Aspartame, or phenylalanine in it. A chemical proven to cause all manner of health issues. Stick it in google if you like.
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/GE0707/S00131.htm
Why isn't it on the news every night? Because Coke is a huge advertiser and has a lot of political clout. Not nearly as much as the pharmaceutical corporations do, Pharma is the second largest business on the planet after Arms dealers.
Whenever you go to a doctor now the second question is "do you smoke" They ask this because if you do, or live with a smoker, or live next door to a smoker... They can blame a whole gambit of woes on it. Just don't blame diet coke, or drugs in chickens, or exhaust emissions, or ......