Outlawing tobacco will cause the same, greater issues that come from Drug prohibition as well.
There will always be a demand for Tobacco, so there will always be a supply.
Only the demand will be satiated by black markets, untaxed, unregulated, irresponsibly distributed by suppliers who build their supply chain infrastructure around the illicit status of the product they are selling.
It maximises the harm done, profits made by making something like tobacco illegal .
Australia has had these plain packaging with the entire pack showing the graphic images for a few years now. They are great, smoking rates are down, they eliminate brand associations people have to the aesthetics of the old packs. You can't display them in a retail outlet, always behind closed cupboards or under counter.
The economics work something like this.
Raise taxes on tobacco, becomes unaffordable for some, people stop.
Government gets less tax from declining sales, raises tax again to maintain same amount of tax from less smokers, becomes unaffordable to more people.
Less people smoking, less cost to health care and treatment. The numbers work in the governments favour, ultimately saving more in health care costs than they would receive by collecting tax on tobacco sales from the people who quit because of a combination of raising taxes, plain packaging, graphic imagery and further regulated restrictions, but not prohibition of it.
Thank you very much for your indept comment