Like most weekdays, we dropped in on the Drudge Report to see what's going on in the world, and Drudge's top headline blazed "Fed War on Cigs".  The link to a myway.com article by Jim Abrams discusses recent action in the Senate to empower the FDA to regulate cigarettes, particularly the nicotine content of tobacco.  It's something the tobacco industry has been fighting for a long time, and up until today had been able to quash similar efforts.  But we suppose with the new found giddy enthusiasm for Government trying to control every possible aspect of our lives, this latest effort made it through the Democratically controlled Senate without much trouble.

Cigarette puffing Obama says he'll sign it into law if it makes it out of House/Senate "conference".

On any given day, we all can expect the legislative process to be rife with hypocrisy.  We've gotten so used to it, that not only do we assume it is so, and expect it, but we have also in very large measure accepted it as the norm.  We shouldn't.

Nonetheless, here we have a glorious example of multi-tiered legislative hypocrisy.  As we blogged before, earlier this year Obama and his super majority of Socialist Democrats passed an historically huge increase in cigarette sin taxes.  This after Obama promised not to raise taxes on the little guy - and most cigarette smokers fall into this demographic.  The rationale at the time was to raise funds to pay for an unnecessary increase in child health care coverage - which the Bush Administration successfully opposed earlier.

Now, with the historic huge cigarette tax in place, Obama and his Socialist co-horts are going to enact sweeping powers to rule over smokers.  The stated goal?  Supposedly to make tobacco use so unpalatable that few if any Americans will take to the leaf.  Or so they say. 

Think about this now....Obama needs cash from smokers excise taxes to fund kiddie health care, but he wants everybody to quit smoking.  We don't think so.  We think he wants the tax revenue more than he wants people to kick the habit.  Nicotine addicts have become an important revenue source for our increasingly oppressive Government.

The cigarette industry long ago discovered if you reduce the amount of nicotine in tobacco, smokers have a tendency to smoke more cigarettes.  In fact, the Federal Government warns of this effect itself - see this FTC bulletin.  Congress wants the FDA to rule over nicotine content.....the inference is to reduce it, perhaps one day to order it eliminated.  But Congress needs smokers tax revenue to fund it's health care program....so the solution to driving up tax revenue is very clever, order nicotine lowered in tobacco products so that those addicted to nicotine will use more of them, paying even more tax. 

Hypocrisy in action.  A cigarette smoking President, who just socked smokers with a huge tobacco tax to fund a pet program wants smokers to quit the habit.

We aren't the Stupid Nation for nothing.




(Full disclosure:  We hold a small position in Altria Group stock)