Iceland is considering banning the sale of cigarettes except by prescription at pharmacies. The legislative proposal will be debated in its parliament this autumn, and some say it has little chance of succeeding.
What is important, though, is that this issue has been raised at a national level in one country: the idea of banning tobacco is now on the table and it will slowly seep into the global public consciousness.
Nicotine, the primary psychoactive chemical in cigarette, is addictive. All kinds of additives are mixed with tobacco making every inhalation a serious health risk. Iceland's proposal would formally class nicotine as an addictive substance and tobacco smoke as carcinogenic.
Moreover, the habit not only injures the health of the smoker, but the inhalation of their smoke hurts those around them. The harm of second-hand smoking takes away the argument that a smoker has a right to smoke as he pleases, which is the reason for the increasing spread of smoke-free work and public areas. While there are estimated to be about a billion smokers in the world - with the largest number in China - they are far outnumbered by non-smokers.
If someone invented cigarettes today, it's hard to believe that they would be approved by authorities around the world as safe, given what we know about the side effects of smoking, especially serious diseases of the lungs and heart.
However, the tobacco industry is huge and lobbies hard to stay in business for as long as possible, even though governments and health authorities know full well the risk it poses to public health.
Since the 1970s, the adverse health effects of smoking have become widely accepted. Governments began to require health warnings to be stated on cigarette packets, and today it is common for the warnings to be both in text and graphic forms.