Thought some of you folks might like it.
The last thing the government wants is for millions of people to stop buying tobacco. Many of the states that are party to the Master Settlement Agreement have issued secured bonds against their future tobacco tax revenue, and if the amount of those revenues keeps dropping year after year, they have to default the bonds and face financial calamity. They also have to explain to their constituents how they spent them down the river using money that never existed.
All tobacco policy in this country (and, now, e-cig policy) is designed to maintain two profitable rackets and keep smokers stuck in an eternal feedback loop (buy cigarettes from Big Tobacco, then buy expensive, ineffective smoking cessation aids from Big Pharma, then bounce back to cigarettes, then repeat this exercise until you die a nice, young, quick smoking-related death before you start collecting Social Security and Medicare).
E-cigarettes, which were invented and developed without any involvement from the aforementioned racketeers, and which give people a real, genuine hope of quitting tobacco for good, pose a grave threat to the hugely profitable gravy train that Big Tobacco and Big Pharma rely on. Each industry has paid billions of dollars in protection money to the government in order to have their financial interests looked after and to be insulated from free-market competition. Then e-cigs came along, a product of the entrepreneurial American spirit that everybody claims to value, and threatened to upset the whole apple cart. A couple years ago, the racketeers realized this new threat would need to be co-opted or destroyed. Preferably at the same time.
So then the chips started falling, with the playbook taken directly from the industrial tycoons of the late 19th century. You crush your competitors by buying up the ones who are willing to sell, then you turn to a complicit and corrupt government to regulate the others out of existence. This second step is what we witnessed last week with the issuance of the FDA's proposed regulatory framework for e-cigs. The massive costs associated with the FDA application process will wipe out every small and mid-sized vendor in the industry, leaving only a remaining few to be bought up (while saddled with sufficient debt to make the price nice and low) by Big Tobacco.
Whether you smoke, used to smoke, or have never smoked, whether you like smokers or curse the ground on which they walk, you should be morally outraged by what's taking place here. Under the banner of "public health," millions of current and future Americans are being condemned to death in the name of illegal market monopolies for the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, and an illegal protection racket being run, right in front of your face, by the government that's supposed to be working for you.
Where have you gone, Teddy Roosevelt, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
The last thing the government wants is for millions of people to stop buying tobacco. Many of the states that are party to the Master Settlement Agreement have issued secured bonds against their future tobacco tax revenue, and if the amount of those revenues keeps dropping year after year, they have to default the bonds and face financial calamity. They also have to explain to their constituents how they spent them down the river using money that never existed.
All tobacco policy in this country (and, now, e-cig policy) is designed to maintain two profitable rackets and keep smokers stuck in an eternal feedback loop (buy cigarettes from Big Tobacco, then buy expensive, ineffective smoking cessation aids from Big Pharma, then bounce back to cigarettes, then repeat this exercise until you die a nice, young, quick smoking-related death before you start collecting Social Security and Medicare).
E-cigarettes, which were invented and developed without any involvement from the aforementioned racketeers, and which give people a real, genuine hope of quitting tobacco for good, pose a grave threat to the hugely profitable gravy train that Big Tobacco and Big Pharma rely on. Each industry has paid billions of dollars in protection money to the government in order to have their financial interests looked after and to be insulated from free-market competition. Then e-cigs came along, a product of the entrepreneurial American spirit that everybody claims to value, and threatened to upset the whole apple cart. A couple years ago, the racketeers realized this new threat would need to be co-opted or destroyed. Preferably at the same time.
So then the chips started falling, with the playbook taken directly from the industrial tycoons of the late 19th century. You crush your competitors by buying up the ones who are willing to sell, then you turn to a complicit and corrupt government to regulate the others out of existence. This second step is what we witnessed last week with the issuance of the FDA's proposed regulatory framework for e-cigs. The massive costs associated with the FDA application process will wipe out every small and mid-sized vendor in the industry, leaving only a remaining few to be bought up (while saddled with sufficient debt to make the price nice and low) by Big Tobacco.
Whether you smoke, used to smoke, or have never smoked, whether you like smokers or curse the ground on which they walk, you should be morally outraged by what's taking place here. Under the banner of "public health," millions of current and future Americans are being condemned to death in the name of illegal market monopolies for the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries, and an illegal protection racket being run, right in front of your face, by the government that's supposed to be working for you.
Where have you gone, Teddy Roosevelt, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
