Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

I saw Michael Cannon of the Cato Institute on the news tonight making an eminently left-libertarian point: while many tobacco companies oppose the new restrictions on cigarette advertising, the nation’s largest, Philip Morris, supports it – because restrictions on advertising benefit major brands at the expense of smaller, lesser-known brands that have more need to advertise. While Congress postures as an opponent of Big Tobacco, Cannon noted, in practice it consistently supports it, even through its purportedly anti-smoking policies.

Baptists and bootleggers, anyone?