Say Anything Blog

Steve Chapman from Reason explains why it’s un-American:

One of the main purposes of the new law is to reduce the number of smokers in the name of improving “public health.” This is a skillful use of language to confuse rather than enlighten.

An individual decision to take up cigarettes is a private event, not a public one, and its health effects are almost entirely confined to the individual making the choice. Swine flu warrants government intervention because it is transmitted to people without their consent. Not so with tobacco addiction.

That’s not the only Orwellian touch in this measure. It is called the “Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act,” which raises the obvious question: What does “family” have to do with it? Answer: nothing, but doesn’t it sound sweet?

Like many intrusive government actions, this law is supposed to protect children. That’s the pretext for telling tobacco companies, in exhaustive detail, how and where they can communicate with consumers, actual and potential—allegedly to prevent the contamination of young minds.

So: Cigarette makers are forbidden to use color in ads in any publication whose readership is less than 85 percent adult. They are barred from using music in audio ads. They are not allowed to use pictures in video ads. They may not put product names on race cars, lighters, caps, or T-shirts. From all this, you almost forget the fleeting passage in the Constitution that says “Congress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech.”

When it gets in a mood to regulate, Congress doesn’t like to trouble itself with nuisances like the First Amendment. In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled it was unconstitutional for Massachusetts to ban outdoor ads within 1,000 feet of any schools and playgrounds. So what does this law do? It bans outdoor ads within 1,000 feet of schools and playgrounds.

The Court said the Massachusetts law was intolerable because it choked off communication about a legal activity. “In some geographical areas,” complained Justice Sandra Day O’Connor, “these regulations would constitute nearly a complete ban on the communication of truthful information about smokeless tobacco and cigars to adult consumers.”

But to anti-smoking zealots, that effect is not a bug but a feature. The only problem they have with imposing “nearly a complete ban” is the “nearly” part.

The anti-smoking zealots are the new prohibitionists, but they’ve learned their lesson from the failed polices of alcohol prohibition in the last century.  They know that an outright ban won’t work.  That it will be rejected by Americans as alcohol prohibition was.  So instead, they are looking to prohibit tobacco use by so heavily regulating the tobacco industry that purchasing tobacco to use is prohibitively difficult and expensive.

That sort of government management of our private choices has no place in America.