Another difference is that smokers (and drinkers) have been taxed very heavily on their addictions.
I remember similar hoo-haa when random breath testing was brought in. Extracts from an article from the SMH 18 years ago:
The Australian Law Reform Commission recommended against RBT. "Important liberties should not surrendered on the basis of a hunch or as a consequence of wishful thinking," it reported. The Australian newspaper editorialised that RBT was a gross intrusion on human rights and freedoms as the law was based on the assumption that the driver might be drunk.
Queensland's premier, Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen, a teetotaller, thought the idea stank: "It is not a vote-winner. It gets a lot of people's backs up." His colleague Don Lane went further: "Random breath tests are a fascist or Nazi-style approach."