Maybe for the pre-Columbian Cherokee. A few thousand men living on a piece of land the size of Virginia, toking a little peace pipe now and then to seal a deal. But once the English came into the picture and got a little taste of the plant, it was a thing of greed. Let's be honest: You had entrepreneurs investing their life savings into plantations, soon importing millions of strapping young bucks, all snatched from their West African coastal villages, just to work the fields without compensation and without a choice. You had monocrops, without rotation, devastating the Atlantic Coastal Plains topsoil. By the 20th century, using modern chemical physical methods, we find Phillip Morris and Company leaching out every bit of colored compound (cellulose, tannic acid, gallic acids, etc.) in big vats, till there's nothing except a mess of white cellulose pulp, then going back in and delivering careful doses of tannins and nicotine--nicotine in much higher concentrations than would naturally occur in the wild plant, in order to guarantee repeat business! And, of course, Joe Camel marketing his permanent hack to misspent, leather-clad youth.
Still, I'd agree that smoking is definitely healthier than fascism, no matter how you slice it.
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