Will the New Tobacco Shenanigans Clear Up Old Inconsistencies?

Not being a smoker, and not having one in the household, I just now learned that the politicrats are looking to further demonize this particular leaf. And yeah, we all know the answer to the question I posed, but for grins, let’s play along for a short while.

Broad tobacco regulation bill clears House, says the Reuters headline. From the article:

Backers, including public health groups and many Democrats, said the measure would help curtail youth smoking, prevent heart disease and reduce rising health-care costs.

"With this legislation, we will place sharp and sorely needed limits on access to tobacco products and on tobacco advertising and marketing," said Rep. John Dingell, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee.

The White House, however, said the legislation would "put an enormous burden on the FDA" that could detract from other public health responsibilities.

Requiring the FDA to oversee tobacco products also "could be perceived by the public as an endorsement that these products are safe, resulting in more people smoking," the White House said.

The bill, which cleared the House in a 326-102 vote, would authorize the FDA to police cigarette labeling and recall tobacco products seen as unreasonably harmful.

So many ways to romp through this garbage, so little time this morning ... I suppose what Dingell means by his “sharp and sorely needed limits ... on tobacco advertising” is an outright ban on it; can tobacco advertising really be more limited without that being the result? (I don’t have a tv, and don’t read print magazines or newspapers, so I don’t know what’s currently allowed by our benevolent cattle herders; but I thought ads are pretty heavily regulated today.) And I suppose part of the marketing limits would be even more Tobacco Nazis screening tv shows and movies to cut out any scenes depicting what is part of many individuals’ daily reality. If this is true, then it seems highly likely that we’ll see more scenes of people lighting up the illegal weed than the legal, heavily-regulated one.

As for the “enormous burden on the FDA”, I for one am not worried about that. Seriously, can they be any more incompetent than they currently are? One potential benefit could be that their baseless fear-mongering regarding whole swaths of the food sector (spinach, tomatoes, beef ...) might go away, along with the idiotic calls to try to track every piece of plant matter as it moves from grower to end user. [And might I just say as an aside that it’s disturbing to me that for so many people, that is an accurate characterization of today’s situation.]

But the real belly laugh came when I read that line about the possible perception of endorsing tobacco products. You mean the subsidies going to tobacco farmers hasn’t established an endorsement? Oh, and speaking of those subsidies, last I knew they were still in place, even through all the tobacco lawsuits, the complicated payment scheme for tobacco companies that resulted, etc. Does this legislation clear up that old subsidy problem? I would be greatly surprised if it did. There’s also the long and illustrious history of the state profiting from tobacco via taxation. If this steaming pile of nannyism becomes law, it’ll be just another kink in the long and tortuously complex relationship between our helicopter federal government and tobacco. [Sorry Tooch, but you missed the mark in that otherwise excellent commentary—it’s already here, man. It’s already here.]