The value of state paternalism gets inverted beyond a point—but what exactly is that point?

In 1604, James I of England anonymously published a small book titled A Counterblaste to Tobacco. He called smoking “a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.” Within a year, he had raised the import duty on tobacco by 4,000%.