The Tobacco-free Kids, their funding extorted from smokers, vow as Hitler Youth did never to touch tobacco. Of course they’ll have their say about the regulation of products their benefactors want to use. So these more than pesky kids, or more accurately their adult mind-benders, recently flew off to the nation’s capital at smokers’ expense, to campaign for Food and Drug Administration tobacco regulation. We, and the FDA chief incidentally, would gladly give these pests a bubble-gum cigar to go home and shut up.

The Tobacco-free Kids’ testimony before Congress on 3rd October may be accessed at the bottom of the page for those with the patience to plow through piles of drivel. It’s the usual litany. Smokers must be punished (more, more, more.) Big Tobacco must be punished (i.e. smokers must be punished more, more, more.) You see, the ostensible punishment of Big Tobacco TFK suggests for the regulation bill would, à la the Master Settlement Agreement, really punish consumers. It is smokers themselves who can and must punish American Big Tobacco for its policy of foisting the financial and social costs of anti-smoking onto customers. Smokers, please, please buy discount products, made by alternative manufacturers, sold by fair dealers. Shop well and wisely.

Simple-minded TFK places itself shoulder-to-shoulder with the largest BT firm, Philip Morris, which supports FDA regulation because it would help entrench its leading brands. In the short term it would. In the long term it would mean incremental prohibition of traditional and genuine tobacco products. Probably not all that incremental either. Nobody here ever said anybody at BT had any real brains. FDA regulation is ultimately a guarantee of a huge nation-wide black market. If that comes so be it we’ll keep smoking. FDA regulation of tobacco is a horrible idea. We are telling you so and will remind you that we told you if it eventually comes. Andrew von Eschenbach, head of the FDA, also thinks FDA regulation of tobacco is a horrible idea (links: originalstored). Will TFK stop nipping at his ankles though? Not a chance. Not unless he kicks them off. We’ve got a box of Havanas for him if he ever does.

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