Prohibition Redux

摘要

Excuse me for men-tioning it, but the era of big government doesn't seem to be quite over yet. This is true whether or not you happen to be—as I confess to being—a member of the inhaling community and a person of smoke. Consider the most recent regulation agreement between big tobacco, the states and the legal profession. If ratified, this would effectively prohibit the promotion and advertising of a legal product, while counting on costly anti-smoking "programs" to be so ineffective that continued consumption will finance health care for our neglected and uninsured children. Like Milton Friedman's old crack about planning being "socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor," this deal neatly contradicts its own expensively litigated terms.