A Puff of Common Sense

Earlier this week, President Obama (a smoker) signed off on a new bill that essentially forces cigarette shills into a competition to make their products less harmful and addictive. A strange group of partners - which includes a president who smokes and a major tobacco company that helped U.S. lawmakers craft the bill - thus created a surprisingly sensible piece of legislation.

In an article filed under what has to be one of the best headlines of all time, William Saletan of Slate explains why the bill is so sensible. The short version is that, rather than banning tobacco companies from the marketplace outright, the law uses the principles of free marketplace to achieve its harm-reduction goals.

The broader implication of this bill, as Saletan notes, is that if it works for tobacco, its principles could just as easily be applied to other drugs currently prohibited by law. There will always be a marketplace for narcotics of all kinds, but governments can limit the harm that drugs cause by enacting laws similar to the one just created for the tobacco industry.

Seems like wishful thinking, though. The politics of the drug war are deeply entrenched, and this kind of solution is so simple to grasp and so likely to be effective that it stands almost no chance of being adopted.