Tobacco Documents Online

I N ALL FAIRNESS 0 ~ m A Constitutional Tragedy in the Making I'm fascinated by the new, uniquely American blame and disdain game. Take any disfavored industry, accuse it of harming youth, and then dema- gogue your way to tax heaven on the backs of its customers. Let me see if I've got the most recent version of this game straight. Anti- smoking zealots in government seek to simultaneously single out and punish the demonized tobacco industry while continuing to collect billions of dollars in tax revenues from tobacco sales, as they have for decades. Does any of this make sense? The states have already sued tobacco companies - but maybe they should have named themselves as defendants because of their own profiteering. Florida even ran its own tobacco company. It's fair to ask what the states and the federal government have done with all the tax money that the tobacco companies have already earned for them. Someone ought to get these government officials under oath and ask exactly when they first considered smoking addictive and hazardous - what did they know and when did they know it? Did they really need to wait until they brought tobacco executives in to testify to suddenly discover that smoking isn't healthy? Daniel J. Popeo Chairman Washington Legal Foundation Now, with classic hypocrisy, we're being told that it's still going to be perfectly acceptable to keep selling these "dangerous" products as long as government can get a big enough piece of the new tax pie. Who's kidding whom? They don't really want "Big Tobacco" or its customers to go away at all. The new smoking control scheme is just public policy pageantry. The most troubling part of this pageant is the proposed sweeping restrictions on the First Amendment right to advertise. By promoting the single largest suspension of commercial free speech liberties I don't always agree in history, our leaders are convening a constitutional conven- with the ACLU, but tion without the rest of us. I sure agree with For that matter, will targeting commercial free speech them now... really work? Consider that marijuana is now one of America's bi h H billb d D i ggest cas crops. ave you seen any oar s or av d Brinkley advertisements for it lately? And what sort of troubling precedent would this censorship set? When all the smoke from this back- door prohibition clears, who and what is next? The Big Caffeine merchants at Coca-Cola and Starbucks, whose products and marketing attract kids in droves, should be justifiably jumpy. This certainly isn't the first time our leaders have insulted Americans' intelligence and thought they could get away with it. But, one of the great things about our democracy is that we give a lot of leeway to regulators, judges, and elected officials, until they suspend the Bill of Rights. I don't always agree with the ACLU, but I sure agree with them and a long line of respected constitutional scholars that these proposals seriously diminish our freedoms. If we end up with liberty for some and not for all, we really have liberty for no one. This constitutional mayhem calls for serious debate. WASHINGTON LEGAL FOUNDATION • 2009 MASSACHUSETTS AVE., NW • WASHINGTON,DC 20036 • http://www.wif.org In All Fairness is produced through WLF's Civic Communications Program.