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Follow-Up to: Why Isn’t There an All-Smoking Airline?

Drug Policy, Nanny Statism, Statism, Taxation, Uncategorized

By Wilton Alston / November 21, 2011 / 1 Comment / 2 minutes of reading

Right on cue, the vigilant bureaucrats at Protect-You-From-Yourself-Central, A.K.A., New York City, have launched a volley for concerned tax-feeder busybodies everywhere. Writes LRC Blog reader, James Nellis:

I thought this was an excellent sidebar to your recent blog post: NYC sues roll-your-own cigarette shops over taxes

The linked piece is chock-full of statist brilliance, and I don’t want to spoil it for you, but here is the bottom line. Folks in NYC who smoke have found a way to circumvent the gargantuan taxes levied against packaged cigarettes, by rolling their own. Smoke shops in NYC enable this circumventing by providing their customers with automatic cigarette rolling machines. (Gawd, I love free enterprise.)

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Why Isn’t There an All-Smoking Airline?

I am not a smoker. Never have been. Frankly, I admit to thinking it’s a vile habit. Those caveats aside, the treatment of smokers in the U.S. is something of a quandary to me. Here is a group composed of a cross-section of Americana that might be unrivaled in its breadth. Rich people smoke. Poor people smoke. People of color smoke. White people smoke. Men smoke. Women smoke. Young folks smoke. Old fogies smoke. Lawmakers smoke. Hell, even the POTUS has been known to light up a time or two. Truly, everybody is represented on the smoking band wagon. With all that representation, again I ask: Why isn’t there an all-smoking airline? The answer is obvious: because the government says so. The obligatory airline safety briefing contains words to this effect: “Federal regulations prohibit smoking on airplanes.” Why in the hell…?

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