Cigarettes are being taxed heavily to reduce smoking, but alcohol continues to be sold at discounted prices and taxed comparatively lightly, despite doing almost as much damage.

Tobacco products kill 15,000 Australians a year, cost the community about $30 billion a year, and raises $9.4 billion a year in taxes and excise.

A packet of cigarettes a day for 20 years will cost the equivalent of the average home mortgage, and it will ruin your health. It's a no-brainer.

Alcohol kills about 6000 a year, costs the community more than $16 billion a year and raises about $6 billion in taxes and excise.

If that is not confronting enough, the trafficking and community costs of illicit drugs would presumably be enormous.

Various proposals have been canvassed: Higher taxes, lockouts, prohibition, staggered hotel opening hours, police crackdowns, mandatory diversion therapy, rehab, tobacco patches, QUIT campaigns, alcopop taxes and sobering bar snacks.

The sales of illicit drugs is worth billions of dollars. The community cost approaches $10 billion and is probably more when multiplier affects are included, such as consequent crime and health costs.

All this boils down to the many layers of social escapism, ranging from a packet of cigarettes and Friday night drinks, to the misery of an ice-affected addict.

Drugs and alcohol have a lot to answer for, but ban them and society would suffer the same violence that gripped America during the boot-legging prohibition years.

There needs to be a strategy. A concerted approach to dealing with social escapism and addiction in all forms.

It is a domestic crisis that easily dwarfs the social and financial cost of terrorism in Australia.