THEY don't, by and large, commit burglary to get their fix. They don't, as a rule, neglect their families to feed their habit. Few of them are found dead in abandoned buildings as a result of purchasing a dodgy batch from an unscrupulous dealer. Nevertheless, in terms of numbers likely to self-harm, smokers have it all over the users of illegal substances. The World Health Organisation, which yesterday saw its global anti-smoking treaty go live in 57 countries, with another 100 or so at least signing up to the longterm goals, estimates tobacco-related disease now wipes out five million humans every year.

In the past century, for much of which fewwomen and small numbers of young people indulged, tobacco killed off 100 million of us. Accelerated usage without intervention will, says the WHO, write off another 150 million people by 2025. This is an arena where the track record of the product producers is as ruthless as it is unsavoury. Every trick in the legal book, and many which aren't, was deployed over decades in the United States to cover up corporate culpability. Only courageous investigations by a number of campaigners, in the teeth of considerable threats to their wellbeing and that of their families, uncovered the true scale of how this legal but highly dangerous drug was marketed in the full knowledge of the health risks, long before public awareness of the damage.

When the files of some of the major tobacco companies were finally forced into the public domain we found out not just that tobacco was a serial killer, but that knowledge of its addictive qualities was also deliberately suppressed. Those spokespeople for organisations such as the Libertarian Alliance who were wheeled out at the weekend to bewail the loss of freedom of choice, might like to reflect just how free was the choice of people who took up recreational smoking without access to research findings allowing them to make an educated and informed judgment.

You might have thought that when the whistle was blown on the tobacco industry it would have been shamed into modifying its behaviour.

Instead it has reacted to the prospect of client loss by a series of strategies which concentrate its notinconsiderable funds, energies and single-mindedness on the most vulnerable markets. These can be loosely defined as the young, and the developing world. Marketing activity in developing countries has been stepped up exponentially, with cheaper brands being exported in bulk to nations and citizens as yet unaware of the full health dangers.

To go into countries already devastated by premature death and disease and aggressively market a product you know will exacerbate a health crisis takes a very special breed of corporate cynicism. The tools used to grow another generation of addicts in the industrial and post-industrial worlds are different but pursued with the same disregard for the welfare of the consumer.

(You do wonder, given this profile, how people like former health minister Kenneth Clarke can continue to take the tobacco industry's shilling, or, in the case of Lady Thatcher, an alleged million or so. ) Sport has proved a fast track to the male youth market over the years, which is why the trade has fought so hard to promote its brands in arenas from snooker to Formula One. It's why there was such a big effort to link one brand to both women's tennis and sports fashion. And, in fact, one of the most distressing and disturbing phenomena in this country in the past 15 years has been the inexorable rise in the numbers of young women smoking and the number of older women contracting lung cancer.

Some of the studies done in this field suggest that young female smokers look on tobacco as an appetite suppressant. They need to learn in no uncertain terms that it won't only be their appetite which gets switched off not so many years down the line.

Tobacco is one area where the Department of Health and the Treasury can make common cause. The dearer the product, the smaller the uptake applies to cigarettes as well as anything else. Gordon Brown can pocket fatter taxes and content himself that he is saving the nation from premature death while he's about it.

The fact is: tobacco is a legal product only because we knew too little too late about its properties.

One of the problems with cannabis use, apart from increasing evidence that in some people it can trigger serious mental illness, is the fact that when smoked it is mixed with tobacco so it also involves both inhaling tar and the risk of addiction. It is a curiosity of health policy in the UK that we have given the problems associated with illegal drugs a high profile and serious ministerial attention, while being relatively cavalier about the carnage caused by both tobacco and alcohol abuse. Drink is massively implicated in criminal activity, most especially crimes of violence and abuse.

Tobacco is, uniquely, a killer substance when used as recommended, yet sold over the counter. This is not to argue for cutting back on funding for programmes to help those users and families whose lives have been made chaotic and worse by dependency on heroin and crack cocaine.

These "hard" drugs have generated a huge amount of misery and mayhem.

But it's time to get seriously tough with the legal end of the market as well. Time to capitalise on the WHO strategy by taking stringent measures against anyone peddling cigarettes to kids. Time to stop turning a blind eye to manufacturers conniving in the import and export of contraband tobacco. It's called drug-running.

Time, in Scotland, to have the political bottle to go ahead with a ban on smoking in all public places.

Might this be commercially disadvantageous? Possibly. Is that more important than helping to stop another generation killing itself?

Not even remotely.

On the drinks front, it looks as if the executive has wisely chosen not to follow Westminster down the ludicrous road to "tackle" binge drinking by providing more access to alcohol for longer periods. Instead, the new model licensing act in Scotland is likely to crack down on time-limited cheap offers, problem pubs, and underage users. It should also take a hard look at the overprovision of licences generally, and the fact that licensing via local authorities has led to a lack of strategic coherence nationally.

All important issues in a country where there has been a steep rise in drinking among very young teenagers and in alcohol-related deaths in older age groups. But among the vested interests still to be tackled in this marketplace is the alcopops industry, whose very raison d'etre is to get kids started on the hard stuff by tailoring the flavour to the junior and undiscerning palate. In my book that's, well, criminal really.