“Banning menthol—the last allowable flavor—in cigarettes and banning all flavors in cigars will help save lives, particularly among those disproportionately affected by these deadly products.” Sound familiar? The Biden administration’s announcement that they’re using their regulatory power to outlaw menthol-flavored tobacco products should ring some bells with gun owners.
Banning high capacity magazines—which no one needs—will help save lives, particularly among those disproportionately affected by these deadly products.
The ATF’s FDA’s statement on the proposed rule banning menthol continued . . .
“With these actions, the FDA will help significantly reduce youth initiation, increase the chances of smoking cessation among current smokers, and address health disparities experienced by communities of color, low-income populations, and LGBTQ+ individuals, all of whom are far more likely to use these tobacco products,” said Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock, M.D.
See? They’re doing this for their own good. Because these ignorant, benighted po’ folks and minorities can’t possibly decide for themselves whether or not to smoke or how to take care of themselves. They need the benevolent, more sophisticated guiding hand of their betters in the federal regulatory bureaucracy to ensure they can’t continue to hurt themselves any more.
Never mind that the science doesn’t support the administration’s case for outlawing menthol flavored tobacco. None of that really matters. Uncle Joe knows what you need and will decide what you can have.
As Biden inveighed last year . . .
There’s no reason someone needs a weapon of war with 100 rounds, 100 bullets, that can be fired from that weapon. Nobody needs that, nobody needs that.
Remember this folksy knee-slapper from just a few weeks ago?
I was down in southern Delaware — they do a lot of hunting and fishing down there — and I was walking up one of the creek beds. And a guy standing said, “You want to take my gun?” I said, “I don’t want to take your gun.” He said, “Well, you’re telling me I can’t have more than X number of bullets in a — in a — in my gun.” And I said, “What — do you think the deer you’re hunting wear Kevlar vests? What the hell you need 20 bullets for? You must be a hell of a terrible shot.”
Old Uncle Joe, who’s a-movin’ kinda slow, loves to tell people what’s good for them. Last year — and again this month — it was the kinds of guns they can use and how many rounds of ammo they can hold. Now it’s the flavor of the tobacco in their cigarettes and their cigars.
Just don’t expect the administration’s latest diktat to be any more effective than Bill Clinton’s “assault weapons” and “high capacity” magazine bans were back in the day. The government doesn’t have a good record where prohibition is concerned.
From Reason.com . . .
Where they’ve been implemented, like in the European Union and Canada, menthol cigarette bans have been a disappointment to their supporters. Most menthol smokers switch to regular cigarettes, buy illicit menthol, or use devices to adulterate legal cigarettes to give them a minty taste. But the U.S. is uniquely vulnerable to the dangers of prohibition. Its menthol market is larger by comparison, at around a third of cigarette sales, and there are significant racial disparities in use patterns.
Wait…racial disparities?
[A]round 85 percent of African American smokers use menthols compared to around 30 percent of white smokers, the Biden administration believes prohibition would “promote health equity” and reduce health disparities.
So with the menthol ban, Biden et al. are targeting a product that is far more popular among black Americans, who would be disproportionately affected. Can you say, “disparate impact?”
But what about the politics of all this? Is pissing off a constituency that dependably votes for Democrats in large numbers a good idea six months before an election? The Clinton administration apparently thought passing the 1994 AWB just before midterm elections that year would be a vote-getter. They thought wrong.
It seems that for a certain kind of politician, though, there’s never a bad time to tell people how they should live. How much soda they should drink. When they can text. Whether they can tan. How to wear their pants. So using the massive federal regulatory apparatus to redefine guns, limit their capacity or, now, change the flavor of their cigarettes is really no big deal.
Besides, blacks have reliably voted for Democrats for generations. Surely a little thing like this won’t change that. Will it?
