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In the coming weeks, Americans are
going to be treated with the worst kind of Washington-speak regarding the
tobacco legislation currently being considered by the Congress and Attorney
Generals from forty different states. We will hear about the scourge of
tobacco and the resultant premature deaths. We will hear about how this
phalanx of government elates has suddenly grown a conscience after decades
of subsidizing the product which, we are now told, "kills millions of Americans
each year".
Time for a quick reality check. Despite the hysteria from the political
class and the media, smoking doesn't kill. In fact, 2 out of every three
smokers does not die from a smoking related illness and 9 out of ten smokers
do not contract lung cancer. This is not to say that smoking is good for
you.... news flash: smoking is not good for you. If you are reading this
article through the blue haze of cigarette smoke you should quit. The
relevant question is, what is more harmful to the nation, second hand
smoke or back handed big government disguised in do-gooder healthcare
rhetoric.
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The tobacco settlement is not only about big
taxes it's about big government. Under the current Senate version, the
deal would require the creation of 17 new government bureaucracies to manage
the tax windfall described above. But it is also about big government on
a much more profound scale, namely, government big enough to protect us
from ourselves.
Even a conservative like me would support government big enough to protect
us from foreign threats and threats to our domestic tranquility but the
tobacco deal goes to the next level. Government big enough to protect
us from our own stubborn wills. And a government of such plenary power,
once conceived will hardly stop at tobacco. Surely the scourge of fatty
foods and their attendant cost to the health care economy bears some consideration.
How about the role of caffeine in fomenting greater stress in the lives
of working Americans? Don't get me started about the dangers of sports
utility vehicles!
Those of you who find the tobacco deal acceptable should be warned as
you sit, reading this magazine, sipping a cup of hot coffee with a hamburger
on your mind for lunch. A government big enough to go after smokers is
big enough to go after you. |