Regulating smoking: Nicotine certainly is a drug. I do
not know anything about government's legal definitions of drugs and
devices.
It does not follow from nicotine being a drug that
the government has any business in my personal life regulating my tobacco
habits.
There was once an advertisement for a brand of
cigarettes that labled it the thinking man's cigarette. Which of course was baloney:
the thinking man does not smoke. But what if the nonthinking man chooses to smoke?
What business is that of government, except that a lot of self-righteous, do-gooders are
insisting upon regulations and prohibitions making the lives of everyone else more like
their own "enlightened" life, and they do vote. And give a bureaucrat a cause on
which to spend money and thereby create a job or a kingdom for himself, and he will do
it regardless of the merit of the cause. "Regulate cigarettes? Glad to do it, and, oh,
by the way, we need a budget increase." The better to keep busy and appear important or
needed.
Regulate tobacco, then what is next? Hibiscus
tea? It has a theraputic effect on high blood pressure. It has been used without
regulation for thousands of years. "But by golly, all drugs should be regulated! If
you start making exceptions, you will have people doing harm to themselves." Durn it,
people know tobacco is unhealthy for them; it's not like anyone is forcing anyone else
to smoke, nor is the knowledge that tobacco is bad for health being hidden from
anyone.
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