For those of us who covered the tobacco wars of the 1990s, it's hard to believe how much has changed. Back then, tobacco companies, fearful of lawsuits, were eager to forge a national legal settlement, passed by Congress, that would give them immunity from lawsuits. Prominent trial lawyers, like Dickie Scruggs, who is now serving time for attempted bribery, were key players in pushing the companies to say Uncle.
The idea of the settlement was that in exchange for legal immunity, they'd limit their controversial marketing, fork over billions to anti-smoking campaigns and generally rein themselves in. The national settlement fell apart. The Left wanted more concessions than the tobacco companies were willing to hand out and many on the right opposed the deal, too. Eventually a deal with state Attorneys General accomplished much of the same goals as the efforts at a federal deal. But for years one element of tobacco control that the Left craved had been missing: Regulatory authority by the Food and Drug Administration.
Tobacco is one of the few consumable products, along with most of the herbal
medicine aisle at the drug store, that's not FDA regulated. Thus
cigarette packages still don't list all of the ingredients, chemicals and the like, that are used to enhance the experience. Now Congress seems poised to pass a bill allowing FDA approval.
How and why did things change? Part of it is simply the election of a Democratic Congress and president. By the mid Nineties, the GOP controlled Congress and that limited what the Clinton administration and its more activist members, like former FDA Commissioner David Kessler, could do. But the most important change has been the continued ostracism of smokers from public life. The anti-tobacco crusade has been going on for two generations, of course, beginning with the famed 1964 Surgeon General's report on the perils of smoking and going through the withdrawal of cigarette ads from TV in the seventies and the end of smoking on most commercial planes in the 80s.
That process has accelerated dramatically since 2004 when New York City essentially banned smoking in bars and restaurants. It seemed so wild at the time. Chris Hitchens wrote a hysterical Vanity Fair piece on his attempts to defy the ban. It seemed radical, the odd teetotaling of a mayor who also pursued trans fats with a vengeance. Now, of course, smoking bans are everywhere and while the libertarian in me finds them irksome, the fact is that the public has not revolted and tossed out politicians who impose them. Trans fats are under siege, too.
Consider it part of the beauty of federalism. The small ideas that incubate in laboratories of democracy, as the former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis famously called the states, have grown wildly. Causality is the hardest thing to trace. But I suspect without the heavy-duty smoking bans begun in earnest after 2004 in Mike Bloomberg's New York, you wouldn't have seen the conditions change so dramatically that the passage of FDA regulation of tobacco is a relatively minor story. When the FDA bill is signed, Bloomberg should be there because it's very much his.
I generally support federalism, but I would consider this to be less the "beauty of federalism", and more an example of a downside.
Federalism has more "beauty" when it allows for more freedom, either by creating competition between political units to discourage restrictions, or at least by letting one escape irksome political restrictions without having to leave the country. In this case, if your theory is correct, its done the opposite, its help spread and increase restrictions on freedom.
The tobacco industry has owned the federal govt for a century. From the deletion of "tobacco" from the Pharmacopoeia (thus exempting it from FDA jurisdiciton) to the destruction of the Blatnik Committee in 1957 to the incredibly weak warning labels the industry itself wrote in 1965, to similar depradations over another 50 years. Localities were the only places too numerous, too directly connected to actual people for the industry to reach.
Freedom from corporate political might? THAT's freedom!
Freedom from nicotine addiction? THAT's freedom!
Freedom from illness, disability and untimely death--with the attendant losses and costs to your family due to that addiction? THAT's freedom!
Freedom from having your kids suckered into that life of debt, illness and addiction? (The industry has known for decades that kids primarily get their smokes from the industry's retailers, and has never done anything about it.) Now THAT's freedom!
So, ordinary people living in the real world and suffering the real consequences aren't impressed with abstract constructions about "freedom" tossed around by ivory-tower theorists pushing their outdated and failed free-market mantras.
The more government intervention and restriction you have, the more corporations will try to "own" that intervention. By having an activist government you create the ability and incentive for corporations and other special interests to manipulate the government for their own ends.
Corporations have little might. They can't make you buy their product. They have influence over government, but its government who has the actual might.
"Freedom from xxxx bad consequence" isn't freedom. It might be a benefit, assuming xxxx is really bad, but freedom is only one beneficial thing, its not that everything beneficial is freedom. Protecting you from negative consequences, is even when justified (and often it isn't) more about restricting freedom than expanding or preserving it.
>>Corporations have little might. They can't make you buy their product. They have influence over government, but its government who has the actual might.
Oy. That's patently silly, of course, on a number of levels.
Product-wise, they have plenty of ways to make you buy their product: create a monopoly, so there's no other choice; or better yet, make their product addicting--to name just two that govt rightfully attempts to control.
Govt-wise, corporations have might _through_ government, ie, through our current system of legalized bribery. Government responding to the needs of its ordinary citizens, ie, free from massive corporate influence--that's freedom.
>>Protecting you from negative consequences, is even when justified (and often it isn't) more about restricting freedom than expanding or preserving it.
That's right. I hate those traffic lights impeding my free driving!
These, tired, outdated (I liked your position better when it was called Laissez faire) are what's destructive.
Most monopolies are the result of government action. And even for those that aren't, well you can have anti-trust law if you want it, without having to have massive government intervention in the economy.
Also for most products having a monopoly isn't "making you but their product". Maybe if they are the only source of water or food, or perhaps even gasoline, that comment might make some sense, but not for the only source of one specific non-vital product. You might have a local monopoly of piped cheap water, but you can be pretty sure government is involved in that process (in some cases actually providing the water, in others granting the monopoly). We don't have monopolies over food or gasoline or most other things.
Govt-wise, corporations have might _through_ government
Exactly. Its government power. The corporations are manipulating it, but the power comes from the government. Most of the manipulation is defensive (to keep the government from harming them in some way), but even when its offensive (for example eliminating competition) its an aspect of government. If we had less government intervention and more freedom than this would be much less of a problem.
That's right. I hate those traffic lights impeding my free driving!
Traffic lights are justified. I certainly don't hate them, I want them to exist. But the reason for wanting them to exist has nothing to do with freedom, and it makes no sense to call their existence or the benefits they provide "freedom". If like Humpty Dumpty, any word you user means "just what choose it to mean – neither more nor less", than your statements won't make any sense to anyone.