Those of you who know me know that I hate the government, or rather, what the government has become, and that is a gigantic, conglomerated, hulking mass of expensive hypocrisy whose ability to waste money is rivaled only by its ability to waste life and destroy liberty. Today I would like to discuss another beautiful example: Big Tobacco.
Americans used to love their cigarettes. Many of them still do. But today, it is fairly popular to take an ideological dump on the tobacco industry, saying that they are ruthlessly robbing innocent, oblivious people of their lives and money. And we all know that tobacco companies snicker evilly every time someone dies of lung cancer. It is ingrained. As a culture, we are trained to hate big companies, and among all the other sinister behemoths of capitalism, Big Tobacco stands out as the biggest, most malicious assailant to the public good. But what is Big Tobacco? It is an industry like any other. They recognize that people like to and therefore will smoke tobacco, that tobacco requires an industry for production and sale, and that, by farming tobacco and putting it into a form you can smoke, they can make money. They recognized that a market existed and they filled the role of the seller. People are always going to smoke, therefore people are always going to buy cigarettes, therefore someone will always be willing to sell them cigarettes. No law or prevalent social attitude is going to stop this.
Furthermore, the tobacco companies do not have an ethical responsibility for their customers' health. No one who smokes is unaware of the danger they put themselves in. The responsibility lies with the individual. No one blames Ford for endangering its customers when they make a Pop Tarts box on wheels like the Fiesta. People who care about their safety in the event of a crash simply do not buy Fiestas.
When the government perceived that the public attitude towards smoking consisted of the brief, insufficient, and wholly misleading phrase "smoking kills," they saw that, by depicting themselves as anti-tobacco warriors on behalf of the public, they could improve their public image. So, the government has been in the business of legislating against tobacco companies and trying to usurp the responsibility of the consumer, a behavior which seems to be innate among politicians. But does the government really care about the consumer? People point to the government's requirement of the Surgeon General's warning on tobacco products. They point to the high taxes imposed on cigarettes. They point to government regulation about the kind of health information tobacco companies can publish. But does this really stop people from smoking? Is the government really working for us on this? We all know that smoking is bad for you. I highly doubt that anyone buying a pack of cigarettes ever looked at the Surgeon General's warning and then changed his mind about his purchase. If government really wanted to stop smoking, if they really thought it was so dangerous to the public health, then why don't they simply make it illegal?
The only thing that the government is gaining out of all this is, surprise, surprise, money. They are taxing people for being smokers. The government recognized the power of the tobacco market, just like Big Tobacco did, and the government wanted a piece of the pie. They recognized that people would always smoke, and that because nicotine is addictive, people will pay high prices to continue their habit. Follow the money, my friends, and you will often find the government skulking nearby.
