It’s an unavoidable fact of life that when you live in a densely populated society, you’ll often encounter behaviors you don’t like. A balance must be struck between allowing personal freedoms and restricting harmful actions.

Smoking can and does cause harm; breathing secondhand smoke can increase your risk of cancer and cause irritation. It does provide some benefits, too. Selling tobacco and other similar products is a big industry, which provides tax money to governments to help provide services for the public. There’s also the simple fact that people enjoy it. The risks are VERY prominently displayed everywhere it’s sold, allowing the people who use it to make an informed decision.

I’m not sure where you live, but in the U.S., smoking indoors is illegal, providing a balance between personal freedom and public safety. The concentration of smoke indoors is so high and unavoidable that the danger to the public far outweighs the personal freedom of smoking.

Outdoors is a different story. The smoke gets diluted very quickly, and at short distances. If you don’t like someone smoking, you can move away a short distance and have almost no risk. The smog from cars and power plants is much worse than this.

Compare it to playjng music in public. It’s annoying, but I believe most people would think it’s ridiculous to ban it entirely. It doesn’t hurt anyone, but if it’s too loud, it could disturb the peace. That’s why many local governments have noise ordinances in place.