FROM MOUNTAIN MEDIA
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE DATED SEPT. 29, 1999
THE LIBERTARIAN, By Vin Suprynowicz
Who will sue Big Tobacco next -- the dog catchers?
The relentless pounding of America's tobacco companies continues.
Last November, industry officials settled lawsuits by a plethora of state
attorneys general, agreeing to pay more than $240 billion over 25 years,
supposedly to cover the states' share of health-care costs for sickened
smokers.
So, have state bureaucrats spent the past 10 months diligently earmarking
all this extorted loot for smokers' health care? Surely you jest. Most of
the dough will go to "programs" having nothing to do with state health
costs, including Nevada's own "Millennium Scholarship" boondoggle.
But now, like a dog arriving late at the chicken coop, the Clinton
administration grows jealous that it hasn't shared in the newest steaming
pile of extorted tobacco loot, and so moved last week to file its own
mammoth federal civil lawsuit against the tobacconists, seeking billions of
dollars which the federals contend they spend on smokers' health care.
There are a few problems. First, this lawsuit would almost certainly fail
in court, increasing suspicions that the whole purpose is to extort a
settlement. In 1997 testimony on Capitol Hill, Attorney General Janet Reno,
whose department now brings this action, testified there are no legal
grounds for such a suit.
Whoops.
Second, the numbers don't work. The federal government actually profits
more than tobacco companies from tobacco sales. Government takes in an
average of 53 cents per pack in tobacco taxes, according to the National
Center for Public Policy Research, while it (start ital)saves(end ital) --
in the form of a reductions in the cost of Social Security and other
programs for the elderly due to smoker's shortened lifespans -- an average
of 32 cents for every pack of cigarettes sold.
By comparison, tobacco companies make only about 28 cents per pack of
cigarettes sold, according to The New York Times.
"Even in the unlikely event that the federal government wins or settles
this lawsuit," said Amy Ridenour, president of the Center for Public Policy
Research, "the poor and lower middle class will pay for most of any
'damages' the government wins. Tobacco companies will raise the price of
cigarettes to pay for the suit, making any award or settlement an indirect
tax on smokers. Fifty-three percent of all federal tobacco taxes are paid
for by people who make under $30,000 per year."
While if the government loses -- as is more likely -- "the taxpayers will
be stuck with the tab for legal expenses," Ms. Ridenour concludes.
Even those who consider tobacco a noxious product best banned (and we've
had such good luck with our other Prohibitions in the past 80 years,
haven't we?) may want to stop and consider how this lawyerly death of a
thousand cuts could affect future investment in American firms that sell
alcohol, firearms, fatty foods -- any industry the unelected Health Nazis
may choose to demonize next.
Did tobacco companies commit "consumer fraud" by knowingly concealing
information about health risks? One of the ironies of Uncle Sam weighing in
as plaintiff in such a suit is that this same federal government has for
years required tobacco products to carry health warnings, providing the
industry with one of its best defenses.
Not only that, are we to presume that if tobacco executives had decided
to make a clean breast of things decades ago, emblazoning tobacco packs
with legends proclaiming "High nicotine! Incredibly addictive! Strongest
stuff available! Get stoned out of your gourd!" the federal regulators
would have allowed that?
These are the same federal nannies who refuse to let brewers and vintners
list the proven nutrient and vitamin content of beer and wine on their
bottles -- or the established fact that consuming small amounts of wine can
benefit the elderly -- lest anyone be "encouraged to buy alcohol." The BATF
even made a fuss back in the late '80s when an importer proposed to market
"Black Death" brand vodka in a little coffin, afraid such a marketing
approach would prove "too attractive to the young."
Yet the federal government -- which already subsidizes, regulates,
allocates, and otherwise guarantees the profitability of tobacco growers --
will now take up the mantle of the Truth Police?
In a free market, litigation is a better way to resolve questions of
damage than arbitrary government regulation and punitive taxation. But
tobacco is so thoroughly regulated and subsidized by Washington already
that this action begins to resemble a lawsuit over spoils between Al Capone
and Frank Nitti.
In a year when the Justice Department's legal division is already
overworked and the entire department faces a budget cut -- with Red Chinese
spies still at large and no one able to figure out who illegally dispatched
the Delta Force to the big bonfire at Waco -- is this really the most
pressing matter on which Ms. Reno's prosecutors should spend their time?
Vin Suprynowicz, assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas
Review-Journal, is author of the new book, "Send in the Waco Killers:
Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," available at 1-800-244-2224.
***
Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John
Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and
thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series
of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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