Congress Passes “Historic” Anti-Smoking Legislation
[Guest post by DRJ]
Although (or maybe because) he’s still struggling with his smoking addiction, Barack Obama spoke approvingly today of new tobacco legislation that “for the first time will give the Food and Drug Administration authority to regulate what goes into tobacco products, demand changes or elimination of toxic substances and block the introduction of new products.”
The legislation also calls for bigger warning labels, bans tobacco-related sponsorships of sports and entertainment events, also bans advertising within 1000 feet of schools and playgrounds, and restricts sales of sweetened, candy, light or mild cigarettes. The goal is to reduce the number of total smokers, especially teen smokers.
I’m not a smoker and the people in my family aren’t either so it’s easy to take a “So what?” attitude to this law. But it’s one more step in giving the government control over our lives. Next, I expect Congress will expand the FDA’s oversight and regulation of alternative medicine and health food products.
— DRJ
I have always wondered what the government would do for revenue if everyone quit smoking. I have tried many times to quit, without success. Currently I am down to 2 a day from a pack a day, and am quitting not only for myself and my family, but I want to give as little tax revenue as possible to Teh One.
JD (c1b316) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:16 pmThey will get my stogies when they pry them from my cold, dead hands. I honestly believe that, one day, here in Chicago, I am going to be told that I cannot smoke on my own porch. When that day comes, there will be revolution, and I will lead it. Go ahead and add me to the watch list and get it over with. Maybe voting for Daley 3 times will help.
carlitos (7d2345) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:20 pmNext on the hit list: fatty foods, corn syrup, fast foods, junk foods, sugar, Fouis Gras??? Oh wait, the City of Chicago already banned that….
This is just another step in the 1000 step journey towards total tyranny.
J. Raymond Wright (d83ab3) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:23 pmI thought everybody voted three times for Daley:
AD - RtR/OS! (1add59) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:24 pmMorning, Noon, and Night – at every election!
JD, I quit cold after about 25 years of smoking, and my habit was worse than yours. I used the Nicoderm patch. That’s the one you can wear 24/7.
Official Internet Data Office (9e58c4) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:25 pmIt is odd that the new law prohibits tobacco companies from claiming products with lower nicotine levels are safer, while allowing the FDA to order products to have lower nicotine levels.
Kevin Murphy (805c5b) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:30 pmI am currently quit (2.5 years this time), probably for good. The only thing that ever seemed to work for me is cold-turkey. Everything else is just fuzzing the boundary.
Kevin Murphy (805c5b) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:33 pmIf everyone would stop smoking, we could bankrupt most of the States in under 2-years, since they couldn’t adjust their spending in time to match the decline in revenue.
AD - RtR/OS! (1add59) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:33 pmFools and idiots. Bringing the ATF swat team to Amerika’s kitchens.
I smoked for about twenty years and quit a bit more than twenty years ago. It was hard; I finally admitted that I had both a psychological and a physical addiction, and treated the first with the conditioning methods I’d used on rats, and the latter with nicotine gum. Took six months to get off the smokes, another six to get off the nicotine gum, and another year to get off the non-nicotine gum.
This puts an end to the attempts to develop nicotine derivatives as ADD/ADHD drugs (nicotine itself is a wonderful dopamine stimulant, but as a drug it does ungood things to your blood flow; there was a trial scheduled of a nicotine derivative in patch form.)
This is so -stupid-.
htom (412a17) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:38 pm=yawn= They don’t call’em ‘coffin nails’ for nothing. Tip of the hat to anyone who kicks the addictive habit.
DCSCA (9d1bb3) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:45 pmWhat??? No more candy cigarettes. My favorite as a child. Lots in the box and probably only a nickel. I’m too old to remember for sure.
We can’t even decide for ourselves anymore. I can’t believe all the liberals are non-smokers or really are excited about paying more taxes for their smokes.
PatAZ (9d1bb3) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:48 pmPOTUS still smokes, PatAZ.
What seems really cruel is the government levying these heavily-regressive taxes on smokes (they cost near $10 / pack here), after people are already addicted to this legal product. Isn’t that what heroin dealers do? Give you the first few hits for free, then you pay them for life?
carlitos (7d2345) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:52 pmhtom,
I hadn’t thought about that. Nicotine can be helpful in the prevention and treatment of ulcerative colitis. I wonder how the FDA will react?
DRJ (180b67) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:52 pmNo doubt a ban on beer-related sponsorship events will be next. It will start at the college level when they decide beer ads can no longer play during NCAA televised events, but before long the pro sports leagues will be pushed in that direction too. Active pro athletes are not allowed to endorse alcohol products, so there is precedent for this sort of regulation.
A couple of years back I heard an interesting claim: supposedly teen sex rates rise during Republican administrations and teen smoking rises during Democrat administrations. The idea behind this is that teens’ naturally rebellious nature makes them gravitate towards whatever risky behavior the current poo-bahs are trying to prohibit.
JVW (2cd0a9) — 6/12/2009 @ 1:57 pmDRJ — like medical marijuana, officially studied to death, with no benefit to a patient.
htom (412a17) — 6/12/2009 @ 2:01 pmDon’t you get it? Lower nicotine levels will lead to increased tax revenue as people smoke more to make up the difference.
Soronel Haetir (a3f11b) — 6/12/2009 @ 5:41 pmThis sort of thing will only increase cigarette smuggling, already endemic in states that have high tobacco taxes. The only thing I smoke is cigars and, fortunately, they are made in Cuba so Obama would not dare ban them.
Mike K (2cf494) — 6/12/2009 @ 5:47 pmLower nicotine levels –> poorer self-medication by those with undiagnosed ADD –> more accidents, crime, ….
htom (412a17) — 6/12/2009 @ 5:51 pmForget cigarettes. Just Google the phrase “broad new powers” (search news) and already on the first page of hits you get stories about…
“broad new powers to take over troubled firms”
“broad new powers to regulate finance”
“broad new powers to regulate tobacco products”
“broad new powers in domestic security”
“FDA to get broad new powers” (before this cig thing)
Some of these were under Bush – but what’s the difference? For the last two generations or so the government has done nothing but gain one broad new power after another. And somehow the populace just keeps drawing new lines in the sand.
Gesundheit (9ca635) — 6/12/2009 @ 6:56 pmI think the revolution won’t start until Obama changes our toilet paper to the old Soviet Union stuff while he bogarts the charmin
SteveG (c99c5c) — 6/12/2009 @ 6:58 pm“Nicotine can be helpful in the prevention and treatment of ulcerative colitis. I wonder how the FDA will react?”
Just the same as they do to other drugs?
imdw (c990d8) — 6/12/2009 @ 8:35 pmimdw,
Like marijuana?
DRJ (180b67) — 6/12/2009 @ 8:39 pmDRJ – Your tolerance and patience is approaching legendary status.
JD (584916) — 6/12/2009 @ 8:51 pmI tried the Nicoderm patch, but they didn’t do a darn thing for me. I had a gawdawful time just gettin’ ’em lit, and then invariably I’d drop it once it was flaming and it would stick to my lap and burn merrily away and stick to my fingers as I’m smacking it out and . . . Really, just not for me at all.
bobby b (4baf73) — 6/13/2009 @ 12:59 am“Like marijuana?”
No nicotine is not classified like that.
imdw (77580e) — 6/13/2009 @ 4:56 amTax something else
++++++++++
1,2,3,4,1,2
Let me tell you how it will be,
There’s one for you, nineteen for me,
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.
Should five per cent appear too small,
Be thankful I don’t take it all.
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah yeah, I’m the Taxman.
(If you drive a car car), I’ll tax the street,
(If you try to sit sit), I’ll tax your seat,
(If you get too cold cold), I’ll tax the heat,
(If you take a walk walk), I’ll tax your feet.
Taxman.
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.
Don’t ask me what I want it for
(Ah Ah! Mister Wilson!)
If you don’t want to pay some more
(Ah Ah! Mister Heath!),
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeeeah, I’m the Taxman.
Now my advice for those who die, (Taxman!)
Horatio (55069c) — 6/13/2009 @ 6:04 amDeclare the pennies on your eyes, (Taxman!)
‘Cos I’m the Taxman,
Yeah, I’m the Taxman.
And you’re working for no-one but me,
(Taxman).
When nobody smokes anymore, how are they going to raise revenue? but don’t worry, Obama’s not going to raise taxes for anyone under $250k/yr……….
Riiiiiight. We’re quickly approaching “Read My Lips” territory.
Techie (482700) — 6/13/2009 @ 7:03 amWhat, exactly, is historic about Congress meddling with people’s choices?
JD (dab43d) — 6/13/2009 @ 8:24 amConsidering that they needed 2 million new smokers to fund the recent “upgrade” to SCHIP, this comes a just a bit weird.
Neo (46a1a2) — 6/13/2009 @ 9:27 amI’m 65 and I have never had a cigarette. When I was a teenager, my parents, who had quit after WWII, told me I could smoke if I wanted so long as I could buy my own. Of the three vices – tobacco, alcohol and women – I could only afford two.
arch (0e0f09) — 6/13/2009 @ 9:51 amJD — It’s a long tradition. Probably started before the Whiskey Rebellion.
htom (412a17) — 6/13/2009 @ 5:30 pmMe, I’ve never smoked, and have no idea what it’s like trying to quit smoking. Yeah, I’ve heard other people tell me what it’s like, but I can’t really appreciate it.
However, I’ve got some rather personal experience with smoking: my mother died, at only 61 years of age, from Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). The last several years of her life were Hell: she had a two story house, with ten steps up to the landing, a ninety degree turn, and then another seven steps up to the second floor; she had to stop on the landing to catch her breath before she could make it to the second floor.
My mother was never big — maybe 105 lb — but she literally wasted away. When you swallow food, you automatically hold your breath; it keeps you from aspirating food and drink into your lungs. For COPD patients, weight loss is a real problem, because eating takes time away from breathing, and they simply, instinctively, eat less and less. My mother might have weighted 70 lb when she died.
That was 1991. Well, my best friend, whom I’ve known since college, smoked low-tar Carltons for most of his life, and Bam! all of a sudden COPD hit him, too. You’d think that COPD would come on gradually, but it doesn’t: you normally have far more lung capacity than you need, and as more and more of your lungs get coated with the crap from smoking, you don’t really notice it much, until a tipping point is reached.
On March 7th, his 55th birthday, he jogged two miles around the Louisville Reservoir, and said that he wasn’t even particularly winded. On March 18th, he said he could still “run up the stairs” in his home. On March 19th, he awoke in distress, struggling to breathe, and that’s it: COPD had struck, and he hasn’t had a decent breath since.
Ken was reasonably healthy, physically active, and worked on his feet all day long. Now he has oxygen equipment at home, uses nebulizer treatments, and can barely work a four-hour shift. He has become, essentially, an invalid.
Ken will wind up losing his job, because he simply can’t do it anymore. At age 55, with COPD, no one will want to hire him. He’ll probably wind up on disability, and all of those tobacco taxes he’s paid in the last nearly forty years of buying cigarettes will soon be used up. He’ll lose his health insurance, so we, the taxpayers, will be paying for his medical care.
I have an instinctive distrust of anything President Obama does; if he told me that 2+2=4, I’d have to check the math before I’d believe him. But from a libertarian perspective we had better realize that the next guy smoking does not always pay for himself; Ken is going to have his hands very deeply in your pockets to live out the rest of his days, however long he has left to him.
I grew up in Kentucky, and during the summer would help my uncle set tobacco on his two farms. I used to explore the big, old tobacco warehouses on East Locust Street in Mt Sterling when I was a teenager (I like crawling around old buildings). I grew up around the stuff, even though I didn’t smoke myself.
This is nasty stuff, people, slow motion suicide. As much as I distrust the Obama Administration, I don’t have a problem with this. If FDA regulation can reduce smoking, I’m fine with it.
The saddened Dana (474dfc) — 6/14/2009 @ 6:40 amSaddened Dana: you have my condolences on your mother, and sympathies for your friend. Your story is unfortunately common. There is no good solution. But boy, howdy! Do statists love to weigh in on what is “best” for others. On some topics, there can be little disagreement. But if you give a statist a nanometer, they’ll try for a parsec.
I don’t have answers. But stories like the ones you related show that there are no simple answers.
Eric Blair (5a226d) — 6/14/2009 @ 6:46 amSmoking is a problem with a built-in solution. I am saddened to see that young smokers, in their early twenties, outnumber the old wrecks like me, three to one, but … there’s lots of stupid things that young people do. And we share the world with lots worse people than smokers, for that matter.
nk (c67cf5) — 6/14/2009 @ 6:48 amWell, Mr Blair, this begs the question: how do you get my best friend’s condition out of your wallet?
Forget Ken; he knew that he was taking a risk, and assumed it willingly. His health situation is on him. But part of the risk he took was the risk of raiding your wallet, and that risk has materialized. You know as well as I do that we, in the form of the government, are not going to just let him die in the street, so the libertarian option is out, and we might as well admit that, right now.
There are a lot of things we don’t allow people to do, because people’s private actions have public consequences. We don’t allow you to drive your Porsche 122 MPH down the freeway, because the odds are greatly increased that you will kill someone else. We don’t allow you to dump toxic chemicals, even on your own property, because they seep into the ground water and affect other people and their property.
It’s too late for Ken: he’s sick, and will be taking food off your table for the rest of his life. But does that mean we shouldn’t try to keep the next generation of people from doing the same thing?
The realistic Dana (474dfc) — 6/14/2009 @ 6:55 amWhy stop there, Dana?
JD (fd2bc3) — 6/14/2009 @ 7:52 amI’d like to stop there, JD, but admit to not knowing how. The problem with libertarianism is that it is essentially heartless: if you fail, you fail, and that may mean going hungry, living out in the streets, and left outside the hospital door because you have no money. Well, as a society, we’ve already taken the decision that we won’t do those things, won’t allow people to suffer like that. We are very much socially interventionist on the welfare side.
The realistic Dana (474dfc) — 6/14/2009 @ 9:58 amThis whole issue in general is why the libertarians won’t have me in their party. I revere free choice, but drugs of any form conflict me. When I was in high school, I had a friend die of a heroin overdose. Drug dealers infuriate me.
And the majority of tobacco smokers I know openly admit they are addicted. My father surely is. My mother quit almost forty years ago, and she tells me that there is never a day she doesn’t want a cigarette.
I’m not trying to convince anyone, nor do I have a solution. But the “law” of Larry Niven still holds: freedom times security equals a constant. The more of one, the less of the other. No way around it.
Like Heinlein’s characters in “The Moon is a Harsh Mistress” repeat: TANSTAAFL.
There Ain’t No Such Thing As a Free Lunch.
Eric Blair (5a226d) — 6/14/2009 @ 10:02 amwe, in the form of the government, are not going to just let him die in the street, so the libertarian option is out
Dana, I’m sorry about these tragedies, and especially the ones so personal to you, but people dead in the streets is not “the libertarian option”. Freedom does not (as we’ve seen with welfare reform) equate with abdicating humanity and compassion.
As to what we don’t allow people to do, I would add that we also do not allow people to have a few ounces of pot on them in their own homes, and to see how well that’s turned out, just ask someone jailed for possession. I’m sure they’ll never smoke pot again. You can argue the statistics, but incarcerating people for pot is costly as well, and as an added bonus, helps keep alive a thriving, un-taxable black market.
Referring to taxes, has anyone done an assessment of the incredible tax revenue on each pack of cigarettes sold in the U.S., and where it is allocated? Let’s forget for a second about the quarter trillion collected in the tobacco lawsuits. You mention high costs, and I’ll simply point to the fact that our government collects 15 billion a year under the guise of covering the high cost of care for the health effects of tobacco smoking. Do you really believe that the state and federal governments don’t ‘borrow’ tremendous amounts of that money for non-smoking related uses? And you would like to give them more power?
If you’d really like to stop people from smoking, I have an unbeatable plan:
Have a female Vice Presidential candidate for the Republican Party endorse smoking.
Immediately the media would lurch into a 24/7 condemnation of all things smoking, with academy award winning documentaries, news specials and web sites all screaming about the evil plot that smoking represents to kill all the brown people.
Also entertainers who smoked would be ‘outed’ and ridiculed as walking environmental disasters, as well as derided for their lack of ‘cool’.
Academia would help as well, ‘introducing’ young children to such works as “Mr. Johnson, the bad smokestack of death”, the story of the white male Republican smoker who unwittingly kills all the puppies, ponies and kittens with his evil secondhand smoke.
Remember, it’s for the children.
Apogee (e2dc9b) — 6/14/2009 @ 10:56 amApogee, that was Jonathan Swiftian in terms of brilliance! Thanks for making me laugh!
Eric Blair (5a226d) — 6/14/2009 @ 11:09 amEric Blair – When I was in high school, I had a friend die of a heroin overdose. Drug dealers infuriate me.
Then put them out of business.
As for your friend, I’m sorry. However, AFAIC, the illegality of drug use is also partially responsible for drug deaths as it acts as a ‘subversive’ marketing campaign. Look at the left – the one thing everyone must concede about the selling of the leftist mindset is that much time is spent on graphics, slogans and marketing, and that such marketing is very well done. Those che shirts don’t print themselves. Leftism is much more of a consumerist culture than they would like to admit.
I’ve never been into drugs, but I can tell you that the “one bucket for vomit, one for piss, and one for shit” scene in the film trainspotting absolutely removes any curiosity I would have about that drug.
You’re not fighting drugs, or drug dealers. You’re battling ideas.
Apogee (e2dc9b) — 6/14/2009 @ 11:11 am11:09 – Thanks, but your comparing me to Jonathan Swift makes me think that you might be high.
Apogee (e2dc9b) — 6/14/2009 @ 11:14 amOh, I think that the ghost of Swift would see a kinship!
Eric Blair (5a226d) — 6/14/2009 @ 11:17 amThe government take from tobacco and sales taxes at the Federal and State levels far exceeds the profits of the tobacco industry, and has for years.
AD - RtR/OS! (914de9) — 6/14/2009 @ 11:24 amIf anyone should be paying for the medical damage done by tobacco it is government, since it “profits” far more from tobacco than any part of the economy involved in the production and sale of that commodity.