Not a knee jerk but an opportunity to funnel people back onto the tobacco or pharmaceutical options. The figures don't lie. The tobacco companies will still owe almost every state billions due to the lawsuits in the 80's. They pay almost every major city tens to hundreds of millions every year. Without that cash things will go south very fast.
There's no way the US can change it's position. That doesn't even account for the massive industry of US tobacco itself. More jobs than i can imagine rely on smoking. And pharma rely on those smoking related illnesses.
America switching to vaping would cause a financial crash that makes covid seem like a quarter lost in the slots.
