Say Anything Blog

Ted Kennedy’s bill handing over management of the tobacco industry to the FDA has passed cloture in the Senate.  The Democrats have the votes to pass it, and Obama has said he’ll sign it in to law.  Which means that the tobacco industry will soon be all but nationalized in America, and will be run by a bunch of bureaucrats who fully intend on grinding it into extinction.

Because it’s not like this is a free country where people can smoke tobacco if they want to or anything.

In a sign of the significant weakening of the tobacco lobby, the Senate on Wednesday moved toward a vote on regulating tobacco in a big way.

The Senate voted 67-30 to end debate — a procedural move — on the legislation, which would give the Food and Drug Administration significant regulatory power over the packaging, manufacturing and marketing of tobacco products. If the legislation is signed into law, which the White House — even with a reformed smoker as president — has indicated a willingness to do so, it will give the F.D.A. more power to ascertain what a “light” smoke means or whatever, and whether there is any distinction whatsoever in the harm to a person’s lungs.

Senator Christopher Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut, took to the floor just after the vote and was practically breathless in signifying the historic nature of the sea change on this issue, which has been percolating for about a decade. He indicated that a final vote may come on Thursday.

The legislation is personally significant to many lawmakers, who have taken to the floors of the House and Senate, to recount the losses of close family members, fathers and mothers, who died of lung cancer.

This bill will give the FDA the power to regulate everything from how the cigarettes are marketed to what is on the packaging to what ingredients are in the cigarettes themselves.  And if you don’t think the intent here is to drive the tobacco industry right into the ground by driving up costs while depressing sales, you’re kidding yourself.

That last bit, with members of Congress lamenting friends and family lost to cancer as the bill passes, indicates what the real goal is here.  Not regulation or public safety, but rather prohibition.  Because it’s not about public health, it’s about forcing people to live in government-approved ways.

Just like the “lifestyle” taxes and the regulations on what kind of car you can drive, this is just another way in which the government is going to pressure you into living like they think you should.  And while I fully agree that smoking is unhealthy, and while I personally dislike smoking and go to great lengths to avoid it when I can, this should be a free country where individuals can choose to smoke if they want to.  And where property owners can choose to allow smoking if they want to.

Unfortunately, individual freedom just isn’t something big government authoritarians like or understand.