While many states are finally re-legalizing marijuana, the Food and Drug Administration is planning to ban the sale of menthol cigarettes. The reason? Because cigarette smoking is harmful. It causes cancer. Thus, the nanny state deems it necessary to protect us from menthol cigarettes.
But wait a minute! If the concern is cigarette smoking and cancer, why ban only menthol cigarettes? Why not ban the sale of all cigarettes?
Well, it turns out that menthol cigarettes are the preferred cigarette of blacks. So, the FDA is just trying to help them out by banning the cigarettes they like. Apparently the FDA doesn’t care about white people because it isn’t banning the non-menthol cigarettes they like.
A question naturally arises: Who gave the federal government the authority to serve as people’s nanny? I don’t see any nanny power in the Constitution, which is the document that sets forth the powers of the federal government.
Moreover, in a genuinely free society people are free to ingest and smoke anything they want, no matter how harmful it might be. It’s simply none of the government’s business what people are choosing to ingest or smoke.
Another question: Where do federal bureaucrats get the authority to be people’s nanny? I thought that in America laws were supposed to enacted by Congress. Where in the Constitution does it say that bureaucrats within the executive branch of government wield the authority to issue edicts on what people can ingest or smoke? Isn’t that what takes place in dictatorial regimes?
Also, correct me if I’m wrong, but didn’t the federal government go down the banning/nanny road with respect to booze? And didn’t the ban have to be later rescinded because people chose to violate it and because it produced a gigantic black market characterized by mass violence?
What makes the FDA think that people will comply with its menthol ban any more than they did with its booze ban? What makes it think that a black market won’t form in the sale of menthol cigarettes, just like it did with booze? Oh well, at least the FDA’s ban will enable the racial bigots who will be enforcing it to exercise their bigotry in a legal manner, just like the drug war has.
The fact that many people are now demanding the end of the U.S. government’s decades-long racist drug war is a tremendously positive sign insofar as freedom is concerned. Too bad the FDA isn’t getting message. The FDA, not menthol cigarettes, is what needs banning.
