Oblique Prohibitionism: House Votes To Put FDA In Charge Of Tobacco
It sounds like an ok move, right? I mean, who doesn’t want the products they consume to be clean and (relatively, in terms of tobacco) safe? Of course, the real goal here isn’t product quality/safety but rather the regulation to death of your freedom to smoke tobacco if you want to.
After more than a decade of debate, federal oversight of the way cigarettes are made and sold appears closer than ever. The House approved a bill Thursday giving the Food and Drug Administration jurisdiction over tobacco.
The FDA would have the power to change the ingredients in cigarettes, dictate bold new warning labels and prohibit adjectives like “mild” and “light” that could mislead smokers.
But the bill stops short of allowing the agency to impose an outright ban on tobacco products or nicotine.
Never let it be said that the big-government prohibitionists didn’t learn their lesson from the failure of alcohol prohibition. They know they can’t just outright ban things like tobacco or guns or booze. But through regulation they can make it so difficult to use things like guns and tobacco and booze that nobody wants to anyway.
We don’t need FDA oversight of tobacco. But we’re going to get it. Because the government doesn’t want us smoking, your freedoms be damned.
