The Honorable Congressman, Dr. Ron Paul (R-TX), is one of my favorite politicians. Although I don’t always agree with him, he speaks only the truth. He wrote this article for the Free Liberal, and it is quite profound.
Moving Towards Tobacco Prohibition
Last week, another bill was passed and signed into law that takes more of our freedoms and violates the Constitution of the United States. It was, of course, done for the sake of the children, and in the name of the health of the citizenry. It’s always the case that when your liberty is seized, it is seized for your own good. Such is the condescension of Washington.
The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act will give sweeping new powers over tobacco to the FDA. It will require everyone engaged in manufacturing, preparing, compounding, or processing tobacco to register with the FDA and be subjected to FDA inspections, which is yet another violation of the Fourth Amendment. It violates the First Amendment by allowing the FDA to restrict tobacco advertising in multiple ways, as well as an outright ban on advertising any cigarettes as light, mild or low-tar. The FDA will have the power of pre-market reviews of all new tobacco products, and will impose new user fees, meaning taxes, on manufacturers and importers of tobacco products. It will even regulate the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.
My objections to the bill are not an endorsement of tobacco. As a physician I understand the adverse health effects of this bad habit. And that is exactly how smoking should be treated – as a bad habit and a personal choice. The way to combat poor choices is through education and information. Other than ensuring that tobacco companies do not engage in force or fraud to market their products, the federal government needs to stay out of the health habits of free people. Regulations for children should be at the state level. Unfortunately, government is using its already overly intrusive financial and regulatory roles in healthcare to establish a justifiable interest in intervening in your personal lifestyle choices as well. We all need to anticipate the level of health freedom that will remain once government manages all health care in this country.
Actions in Congress such as this tobacco bill are especially disconcerting after we thought we were beginning to see some progress in drawing down the wrong-headed and failed war on drugs. A majority of Americans now think marijuana should be legal, taxed and regulated, according to a recent Zogby poll and over 70 percent are in favor of allowing medicinal use of marijuana. Bills like this take us down exactly the wrong path. Instead of gaining more freedom with marijuana, we are moving closer to prohibiting tobacco. Our prisons are already bursting with non-violent drug offenders. How long will it be before a black market in tobacco fills the prisons with non-violent cigarette smokers?
Hemp and tobacco were staple crops for our founding fathers when our country was new. It is baffling to see how far removed from real freedom this country has become since then. Hemp, even for industrial uses, of which there are many, is illegal to grow at all. Now tobacco will have more layers of bureaucracy and interference piled on top of it. In this economy it is extremely upsetting to see this additional squeeze put on an entire industry. One has to wonder how many smaller farmers will be forced out of business because of this bill.
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Paul needs to think further into the subject and perhaps be more encouraged.
The FDA can now be provided with suggestions how to carry out its new mandate in a freedomsupportive way and yet solve the smoking-related health problems using new technologies now available but inadequately tested.
1. Screened Single Toke Utensil
Marijuana prohibition has aided the tobacco industry by bringing with it a de facto prohibition of anti-overdose smoking devices (serving size = 25-mg. instead of a 700-mg. cigarette) which are dangerous to possess because any rogue cop can suddenly appear and interpret them as evidence of illegal cannabis use.– Whereas a hot burning overdose joint is easy to hide from the cop and looks like a “legal” cigarette. If long-stemmed one-hitters (suck slow; the little bit of herb burns slowly at low temperature; the long drawtube gives smoke further time to cool down before reaching your trachea) had been available to everyone for the last few decades, 100,000,000 tobacco genocide deaths could have been entirely prevented (“it’s the dosage, stupid!”).
Anyone can make such utensils easily in their own neighborhood from readily available materials (including mesh-40 metal screen). Marijuana prohibition has been one means of protecting the tobacco industry from the drastic shrinking of consumer use which would have occurred if these utensils had becomne universally prominent replacing the hot burning overdose cigarette.
If Rep. Paul agrees with the above, perhaps he can build this logic into his cannabis bill.
2. E-cigarette
Astoundingly, the FDA speaks of banning this product on the specious grounds that it hasn’t been “proven safe”.
The E-cigarette has been around for ten years, not one fatality has ever been reported worldwide, meanwhile the WHO estimates 54 million may have died of hot burning overdose cigarettes. Duh????
I believe this is a special case where bureaucratic criteria of “proof of safety” must be waived.
Because Rep. Paul favors legalizing cannabis, he should consider this: it may be that Big 2Wackgo hates the E-cigarette because (a) it may entirely replace the high-profit cigarette; (b) someone is surely soon going to flood the market with cartridges loaded with THC instead of nicotine formula, impossible to suppress with sniffdogs, cops and inspectors, bringing about the total high nightmare (for Big 2Wackgo) of de facto marijuana legalization (millions will find cannabis arguably one of the BEST ways to eliminate nicotine addiction)!
Please urge Rep. Paul to include funding in his legislation, to bring about urgently needed confirming research into e-cigarette safety including best ways to produce properly measured pure nicotine and cannabinoid recipes for medical and imspirational use.
3. Vaporizer Marshall Plan
The $200 Bil. Clinton-Gore 1998 Tobacco Settlement money has been hijacked by local politicians everywhere for roads, schools and… cops to arrest cannabis users. If there is enough money left, consider buying every registered nicotine addict (there may be 50,000,000 or more) a top-of-the-line Volcano Vaporizer ($600 each) — total $30 billion, BIG DEAL, what was the $200 bil. for anyway? Maybe throw in an e-cigarette with cartridge supply, another $60, total $33 billion.
4. If the above sounds too liberal, consider:
a. Some have thrown around a figure of $1 trillion which “Obamacare” will cost over a decade, meanwhile
b. The FDA estimates a $193 YEARLY cost of cigarette addiction to the USA in medical and work/loss costs. That probably doesn’t include further costs such as 3000 deaths and huge expense of urban building fires caused by cigarettes, highway crashes which happened because “a cigarette or two” emboldened a drunk to try driving (“Can’t leave the car in this neighborhood overnight”), and murders which happened because “a cigarette or two” helped an angry drunk clear his mind and remember to take the gun along.
Rep. Paul should commission studies showing the true cost of cigarette smoking and, long necglected, a diligent survey of the opportunities now before us to address the problem in unprecedentedly successful ways.
At least we don’t have slavery anymore. Also, women are allowed to vote nowadays.
I love, love, LOVE Ron Paul–and I agree with his point–but he needs to be more precise with the phrasing sometimes.
Personal freedom, will our kids even know what that is?
Ethan Nadelmann on
Tobacco Prohibition
DPA YouTube Video
Huffington Post:
Keep Cigarettes Legal
DPA Articles
Slipperly slopes.