“The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving forward with a regulatory rule in the final days of the Biden administration that would effectively ban cigarettes currently on the market in favor of products with lower nicotine levels, which could end up boosting business for cartels operating on the black market,” Fox News reported Tuesday.
Rich Marianos, a former ATF assistant director and the Tobacco Law Enforcement Network chair, summed up his concerns bluntly and starkly:
“[President Joe] Biden’s ban is a gift with a bow and balloons to organized crime cartels with it, whether it’s cartels, Chinese organized crime, or Russian mafia. It’s going to keep America smoking, and it’s going to make the streets more violent.”
That puts to the lie every fraudulent “justification” Biden, the Democrats Party as a whole, and the entire citizen disarmament lobby has advanced for the purpose of swindling Americans out of their guns – that doing so will reduce violent crime, characterized with the manipulative term “gun violence.” As such, it also shows the administration’s ridiculous Office of Gun Violence Prevention to be the PR scam that a quick analysis of how much “gun violence” it actually prevented shows it to be.
One need only look at the disastrous history of Prohibition, and the utter infectivity of the so-called War on Drugs, with attendant expansion of tyrannical enforcement practices and powerful created incentives for corruption at all levels. When policies produce the opposite of what they promise to do, a generous analysis would call them incompetent. When those responsible for implementing and enforcing them not only don’t correct course but double down on what doesn’t work, the more likely explanation is that’s what they intended all along.
There’s nothing like more “gun deaths” for gun prohibitionist blood dancers to revel in and exploit in their demands. And more there will be, especially with criminal alien gangs that illegally crossed the border and have been welcomed into Democrat “sanctuary cities” by anti-gun “authorities who then play catch-and-release — with purposely minimal charges –so career predators are not “overrepresented in the criminal justice system.”
Turf wars with established gangs are inevitable. Meanwhile, the carnage of both intended targets and collateral victims will escalate. As Mr. Burns from The Simpsons would say, “Excellent!”
It recalls another effort by Biden to ban the menthol cigarettes favored by minority smokers, which, per the Law Enforcement Action Partnership, would “lead to illegal, unlicensed distribution in communities of color, trigger criminal laws in all 50 states, increase the incidence of negative interactions with police, and ultimately increase incarceration rates.”
So, it’s not just a gift to private crime interests, it’s a surefire way to gin up demand that government “do something,” meaning more “laws,” and expanded enforcement, reducing, as it always does, the freedom of citizens who have nothing to do with crime. Case in point, the way private bank accounts are monitored, with threshold withdrawals triggering mandatory reporting to the feds. Add in asset forfeiture, where carrying a sizeable amount of cash (that says right on the notes it is “legal tender for all debts public and private”) can result in currency being seized, and protracted and expensive legal battles to try and recover it from an agency that will fight it every step of the way, with legal costs borne by the taxpayers.
As a side note, who remembers ATF handing out Leatherman tools to its agents with the slogan “Always Think Forfeiture”? It’s a game to the “swarms of officers,” and lives ruined be damned.
The FDA has not posted the proposed rule at this writing, and when it does, the public review and comment period will extend into the Trump administration. What’s not clear is if this rule is being seriously considered or if this is just another in a series of Biden administration cheap parting shots, intended as an in-your-face revenge move against Republican voters and a complication for the incoming leadership.
No doubt comments will reflect all of these objections and more, such as the self-defeating reality that reducing nicotine will likely mean people will smoke more to get the same fix. So, disregard that even “legal” product has already increased crime, as lucrative foreign smuggling enterprises bypassing customs duties and New York City’s draconian cigarette taxes show.
Don’t look for FDA to come up with meaningful estimates for the increased homicides and general misery this bright idea will encourage. While the answer to that is, at best, a politically weighted guess, it is tough to credibly deny that more death and injury will be an inevitable result and that it’s fair to conclude gun-banning Democrats will find that increase advantageous to their goals.
A quote from the Centers for Disease Control comes to mind in its quest to use one-sided junk science “research” to attack the right to keep and bear arms:
“We need to revolutionize the way we look at guns, like what we did with cigarettes. Now it [sic] is dirty, deadly, and banned.”
Hopefully, Donald Trump will put a quick stop to this nonsense, and the bureaucrats behind it, soon after he assumes office. Then, predictably, expect howls from “pro-choice” (when it comes to more killing) Democrat agents of tyranny, amplified by the media, that he’s condemning more Americans to die from heart disease and lung cancer.
The real answer, of course, is with education, not crime and government corruption-enabling coercion. And if prohibition has enabled nightmare conditions over alcohol and drugs, imagine how much more dangerously dystopian things would get if the primary source for guns were a cartel-controlled black market.
The case could be made that to stop a plague on humanity that has resulted in the deaths of untold tens of millions, a good start would be to ban gun-grabbing control-freak totalitarians.
About David Codrea:
David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating/defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. He blogs at “The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance,” is a regularly featured contributor to Firearms News, and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.
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