Yeah, we’ve dropped the ball. You actually need to do some enforcement to make this work, seems like that’s hardly being done. And increases in enforcement would pay for itself.

Making something annoying to do definitely is a winning strategy.

It’s not even criminal to use a VPN in China, but they are banned and make it very difficult use, you just accept your fate that they don’t really work anymore. It’s still possible to circumvent the Great Firewall, but requires way more effort than before. Most people just don’t, even those with a desire to.

Just that for our purposes, it’s for something worthwhile (In my opinion. Smoking is dumb, and as stated in another comment, someone’s “freedom” to do it isn’t convincing if you want to live in a social democracy.)