Cigarette smoking has become a part of everyday life for many Americans. Every second, someone somewhere smokes a cigarette. Since the early 20th century, institutions have investigated the negative, and in some cases fatal, effects that smoking tobacco products has on the body. Banning cigarette advertising on television and requiring warning labels on all tobacco products sold have not been enough to prevent hundreds of thousands of people from dying each year from the long-term effects of tobacco. This country has focused on starting to legalize marijuana; however, the focus should shift to this negative element of our economy. Cigarettes should be illegal in the United States due to extensive damage to the body and almost guaranteed cause of death. In 1919, lung cancer was first discovered. Dr. George Dock asked his students to come and observe the autopsy of a man with the first sight of what we now know as a cancerous lung. One of the students who witnessed the autopsy later saw nine soldiers with the same lung cancer who had all been heavy smokers during the First World War. This was the first connection doctors made between tobacco smoking and lung cancer (Meyer 72). Tobacco became a commodity once soldiers brought it back from war; however, discoveries about the health effects of smoking increased as well. In 1939, further research was conducted and it was now scientifically proven that smoking tobacco leads to increased cases of cancer and heart disease. It wasn't until the late 1950s that selling cigarettes to minors became illegal. In the following decade the Cigarette Smoking Act came into full force (Meyer 72). It was at this point that he never... middle of paper... received government funding and was sentenced to 270 years in federal prison for "falsely treating" his patients. This is all about money. The government receives a luxury tax on cigarettes and hospitals receive billions of dollars due to the many patients who do not have to go to the hospital to receive radiation and chemotherapy treatments. Every person diagnosed with cancer is suddenly worth a minimum of $300,000 to the cancer industry. If the government eliminated tobacco, it would also eliminate a major cause of cancer, which would mean a loss of funding. The government's focus should not remain within monetary limits. They should be more concerned about the estimate that 159,260 Americans will die from lung cancer in 2014. Over the past five years, the focus has shifted away from drugs like tobacco and onto marijuana..