Why is Han Solo a good guy while other smugglers in real life are demonized?

Because he ends up helping the heroes defeat the empire.
Until he reverts to his old ways in the sequel trilogy and gets laser shanked by his son.

Hans could get away with anything because e was so dayum good looking!!! He had made bad choices when he was a smuggler, but atoned for them when he became a good guy so I don’t see that as a bad message for our youth by showing them that just because they’ve made bad choices in the past that they are required to continue to make bad choices in their future…live & learn!!!

As for what he smuggled – well, he worked for a crime lord, so certainly drugs. Probably just about anything he got paid to as long as it wasn’t too hot or against whatever moral code he had.

He was not a good guy, as a smuggler.

Real smugglers are ( OF COURSE ) not a group who all have the same opinions of themselves. Of course some of them think well of themselves, and others don’t. Also not all laws or regimes are just, so I might agree that certain of them are doing good by smuggling some things.

A bad message to youth? No. The bad message to youth is making a good movie, and then stupidly changing your mind and changing the films in a dirt-stupid way where Han didn’t shoot Greedo before Greedo had a chance to kill him, because there’s no way Greedo would miss in that situation, and Han knew that, so of course he shot first, or else he would be dead, and never would have become “a good guy” in any sense.

Han was smuggling “spices”, thought (but AFAIK nowhere accurately revealed) to be an illegal addictive substance.

It’s fiction, not real life. Movies do that a lot.

Who says smugglers are demonized, other than by ” the authorities”? Most smugglers are working to provide goods that are blocked from entering a territory unless onerous taxes are paid.

Think of the merchants who smuggled tea into the American colonies, the bootleggers who smuggled Canadian whiskey during prohibition.

Han Solo comes from a long history of honorable smugglers that make life easier for others.

Smugglers are always demonized by Whichever state into which they smuggle contraband. In Han’d case, there’s the double whammy. He’s both a smuggler AND a rebel, despite all the contempt he proclaims for “causes”.

And then there is Rick who smuggled guns into Ethiopia.