July 31, 2008

Welcome to the Nanny State - tobacco

This is going to go over well. From the New York Times:
House Votes to Let FDA Regulate Tobacco
Decades after the surgeon general first warned that cigarettes were a health hazard, the House of Representatives overwhelmingly approved legislation on Wednesday that would for the first time give the Food and Drug Administration the power to regulate tobacco products.
And of course, it's all about compromise and public show; not about actually doing something with teeth:
The bill specifically states that the F.D.A.’s new powers would stop short of the ability to order the elimination of nicotine from tobacco products or place an outright ban on all tobacco products.

But the agency could reduce nicotine to nonaddictive levels if it determined that doing so would benefit public health. The F.D.A. could also require changes in tobacco products, like the reduction or elimination of other harmful ingredients.
So you do a big feel-good spectacle, spin some cycles legislating, create a new set of laws that cause the FDA to get even more bureaucratic and bloated (your tax dollars at work here...) and at the end of the day, all it does is change the printed warning on the box and tweak the makeup of the tobacco (using more chemicals). Typical government stupidity. Posted by DaveH at July 31, 2008 12:49 PM | TrackBack
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