Smoking makes you cough, coughing is never associated with a good thing and never feels good either.

Only absolute morons would begin to think something that makes you cough as one of its primary effects isn't bad for you. Which is why the idea that people in history were so stupid only took off once someone that fucking stupid (potheads) started to become common place.

Because I don't think its so much government interference, and more people moving into "science based thinking." So instead of being able to make reasonable conclusions based on obvious and observable reality, they need "Science" to confirm and explain it to them.

And since the way "Progress" works is we must be smarter now than those in the past, it became a quick assumption that anyone prior just didn't know and that's why they did it while we are too enlightened to fall for Big Tobacco's tricks. It can't be a nuanced and complex relationship with something people know is bad but still brings them peace in some way, because then people might start to think that applies to other hedonistic pleasures like sex which is double plus always a good thing.