Indeed, if tobacco is such a good product, why don't tobacco executives use it themselves?

Nassim Taleb: "Never buy a product that the owner of the company that makes it doesn't use, or, in the case of, say, medication, wouldn't contingently use." 

(from: http://www.businessinsider.com/nassim-talebs-musings-on-facebook-2013-7#ixzz2ZFlix7xX)

Got to agree with the eccentric author of "The Black Swan" on this one.  Indeed, why don't tobacco executives use their products, and why don't they want their children to use them? Here's the response of tobacco executives from R.J. Reynolds when asked by Dave Goerlitz, then a Winston cigarette ad model, about why none of them smoked:

"We don't smoke that sh*t. We just sell it. We reserve the right to smoke for the young, the poor, the black and the stupid." - as quoted in The Times of London, 02 August 1992.