Today Congress takes up the question of new regulation of the tobacco industry. While we're at war, in the midst of an economic curfuffle, and concerned about them wasting tax money, they cannot take time to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. However, there's plenty of time for them to add regulations to industry, which can do nothing but exacerbate the current economical situation.
As Rush Limbaugh said on his program today, the legislation has nothing to do with Congress abhorring the practice, as they intend to exempt mentholated cigarettes (accounting for more than 25% of the industry's products) from the new levy (levy=tax). It's all about getting more tax money.
On the auspices that it cost so much more money to abbrogate the effects of drinking, smoking, and carousing, lobbyists won a repeal of Prohibition. While the shootings and crime associated with bootlegging and the like went away, new wickedness replaced them: DUI, DWI, spousal abuse, the lawlessness of the frontier town, gambling, the breakdown of families, etc., filled the void. These new vices arguably cost society more in absolute dollar terms than the blatant obvious costs of the underground bootleggers, but are in no way less violent or severe on their victims.
All throughout history, tobacco and other controlling substances have been subject to federal control. The so-called "Sin Tax" levied against these eccentriccal commodities ostensibly fund a myriad of healthcare programs meant to abbrogate the effects thereof, from counseling to outpatient care to increased law enforcement demands and to the medical costs associated with manslaughter DUI.
Under the same rationale, new lobbyists call for a move to legalize marijuana and bring it out of the shadows so that people are spared exposure to the criminal element. They cite the fear and loathing associated with Capone and Seagle and speak of caring for the victims, which constitutes nothing more than code for "so we can tax it." They do not intend to give health care agencies money but intend to shuttle the money into programs they want, no matter how distally associated to health care. If you doubt that posture, consider how the various states reappropriated the tobacco settlement money, and none of them spent the money on health care. Utah used it to refurbish highways for the Olympics. Nevada reformulated it into a scholarship program. Other states followed suit. The "victims" of tobacco are not better off for any of that money.
Politicians often dress their ulterior motives in the drag of care and concern. Under the auspices of altruition, those least concerned with our well-being lure us down into hell with flaxen cords. I find it highly ironic that King James I of England (James VI of Scotland) under whose reign the tobacco industry actually began criticized advocates of that industry. He came to the throne at a very bloody period of history and arguably was not among the greatest advocates of the well-being of mankind at large. At the end of his rebuke, however, he closes with the following:
Have you not reason then to be ashamed and to forbear this filthy novelty, so
basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use
thereof. In your abuse thereof sinning against God harming yourselves both in
person and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you
by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered at by all foreign civil
nations and by all strangers that come among you to be scorned and held in
contemp; a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the
brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest
resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.
If they really felt the practice were reprehensible, they would endorse prohibition. The trouble is, they can't afford to hate it. They make too much money.
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