Moreover, recent economic research finds that higher taxes are justified on welfare grounds, because the costs to smokers are huge (even though the external costs to others might be small), and that higher cigarette taxes do not hurt the poor (since the self-control value of higher taxes helps the poor more). Nobel laureate Amartya Sen wisely reminds us that “it is important that the practical case for tobacco control is not dismissed on the basis of an incomplete libertarian argument.”