A start to helping our economy get back on the right track

In the midst of studying for my Therapeutics exam on Tobacco cessation, the absurdity of smoking is really troubling me. With the way the economy is right now and the dire need to save money and get our country out of debt, we continue to smoke our way into debt even more with each pack of cigarettes that is smoked. Not only are cigarettes the only marketed consumable product that when used as intended will contribute to the death of half or more of its users, but each pack of cigarettes smoked costs society $7.18 . That's $3.45 for associated medical care due to the effects of cigarettes and $3.73 in productivity losses due to time missed from work due to effects of smoking. That ends up being a total of $157 billion in annual health-related economic losses. To me this is completely absurd! But this is one of the major problems with our country right now. Our country spends 16.3% of its GDP on health care each year (approx $2.5 trillion). With those numbers, health care is a HUGE problem for the current government. In my opinion, prevention should be the way we go. Why not set up a system to reward those that take care of themselves? Smoking and obesity are both linked to just about every chronic disease we see.
I think there should be a HUGE increase in tobacco taxing (over $5 more) or just begin to outlaw it period. Right now the government seems to be wanting to change everything and go against our constitutional rights anyways, so why not just keep it up and ban tobacco. It would save our health care system BILLIONS each year and would be a start to helping us move in the right direction. And an added benefit...we would have 5.4 million less deaths each year from smoking and 50,000 less deaths from second-hand smoking.