Government will lose it’s cash flow from increase cigarette tax when fewer people smoke. It’s not about health with those people, it’s all hyperbole. If you think that a prohibition on tobacco will result in better health you’ve not read history on the Prohibition era.
I think looking at Prohibition is instructive, but not conclusive. There is a different level of consumption between alcohol in 1920 and smoking in 2016. For whatever reason, anti-smoking efforts have been much more successful than temperance movements could’ve ever dreamed of 100 years ago.