Jump to full article: 24/7 Wall Street, 2009-06-12
Author: Douglas A. McIntyre
Intro: The war on smoking is not at all like the war on drugs. The government collects huge sums in taxes from the sale of tobacco. It is ironic that it wants to take a substantial portion of the money and use it to regulate what goes into cigarettes and stipulate how they will be marketed. It is behavior that makes bringing the deficit down more difficult by keeping a sin tax high but using receipts to abolish the sin.
The big tobacco companies actually got what they wanted as the FDA steps in to regulate them. It will be harder to sue the firms once the government is passing judgment on how they do marketing and what chemicals their products contain. The industry may end up being more profitable as legal costs and settlement fees disappear.
Putting tobacco company behavior under the FDA does everything that the government wants from the regulation of the industry, except the ability to make even one single person stop smoking.
Jump to full article » |