> There doesn't seem to be political will to simply ban cigarettes, so here we are.

A simple ban will work as well as prohibition of alcohol did. There will be a black market. Sure, producing tobacco is a bit more involved then producing liquor, but for smuggling there are enough options.

The attempt is to raise prices and do marketing against smoking as well as preventing ads for smoking. So that over time the interest goes down and when looking at numbers of smokers that seems to work in some regions.

Of course tobacco lobby has a lot of money and tries to prevent all measures.