Rockwell’s Law (named after Lew Rockwell who created it) states, “Always believe the opposite of what state officials tell you, and the corollary, always do the opposite of what they advise you.” I subscribe to this which is why the new Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cigarette warning label requirements make me want to start smoking*. I’ve never had a desire to start smoking in my life, nor have I ever smoked a cigarette but when the government puts so much effort into making people think something is bad it instantly raises red flags in my book.
I’m guessing the cigarette companies forgot to pay their yearly extortion fee because they’re now having to resort to filing a lawsuit against the FDA to prevent themselves from having to put the new warning labels on cigarette cartons:
In their 41-page complaint, the five companies say the new labels would illegally force them to make consumers “depressed, discouraged and afraid” to buy their products.
“The government can require warnings which are straightforward and essentially uncontroversial, but they can’t require a cigarette pack to serve as a mini-billboard for the government’s anti-smoking campaign,” Floyd Abrams, a lawyer representing the cigarette makers, said in a statement.
How naive those cigarette companies are. The government can make you do anything because they have enough capacity for violence to force you obedience.
Let’s talk about the FDA’s new requirements for a second. Frankly I find the requirements absurd to the nth degree. As I said I don’t smoke and never have because I know it’s not good for you, in fact almost everybody knows it’s not good for you. You’re told throughout your entire public school career how dangerous smoking is (which is why so many kids start in all likelihood), you’re blasted with messages on television that tell you how bad smoking is, and there are billboard advertisements telling you how bad smoking is. If you haven’t figured out that smoking is bad by the time you’re old enough to legally buy cigarettes you should be smoking 10 packs a day to help Darwin get you out of the gene pool (note, I’m not saying people who smoke should be removed from the gene pool, just those who do it and don’t realize there are negative health side-effects involved).
By the time somebody walks into a store and makes a conscious decision to buy a pack of cigarettes they’re beyond the point where a simple warning label with a picture will dissuade them. This entire effort is a waste of taxpayer time and money as these laws need to be enforced (enforcement isn’t cheap) and now lawyers need to be paid by the FDA to fight this lawsuit. All this for what is effectively nothing more than the government not liking cigarette companies anymore.
* Before somebody tells me to not start smoking, I’m being somewhat facetious. Although I do have a desire to do the opposite of what the state tells me I don’t actually have a desire to start smoking.