Here we go again: On January 14, the US Food and Drug Administration announced its latest rule proposal in the War on Nicotine.

Under the rule (which faces a 240-day public comment period before implementation, if the incoming Trump administration doesn’t withdraw it), cigarette makers would have to reduce the amount of nicotine in cigarettes.

The FDA promotes the rule as a way of making it easier for smokers to quit, and of making cigarettes less initially addictive going forward.

The actual result, as with some previous FDA stunts, will more likely be an increase in lung cancer, emphysema, and COPD among smokers.

As a 40-year smoker who’s now been “clean” for nearly two years but who still uses non-tobacco nicotine pouches (which, along with vaping devices/liquids, the FDA seized the power  to regulate by “deeming” them to be “tobacco”) after previous unsuccessful attempts to quit, I’m aware of certain truths

First, in order to quit smoking, one has to get REALLY motivated to quit smoking.

Second, a lower level of nicotine in a single cigarette won’t increase the desire or ability to quit or probably even decrease the likelihood of the initial addiction. The psychological component of smoking — force of habit and the the depressing absence of that thing in your hand — is the big deal, which is why nicotine patches, etc. don’t seem to help that much (I used Chantix, which DID help).

Third, while nicotine does come with some negative effects like increased heart rates and higher blood pressure, it’s far from the worst component of tobacco. It’s not a carcinogen and it doesn’t damage the lungs.

Less nicotine in a cigarette means smokers who are not already highly motivated to quit (including new smokers not yet “addicted”) will probably just smoke MORE cigarettes.

Which means they’ll MORE likely end up with one or more of the maladies associated with the “tars,” rather than with the nicotine, in tobacco.

In other words, the new FDA rule, if implemented, will likely have a negative, not positive, effect on “public health.”

As a commenter (“JdL”) on a site I publish suggests, suppose the FDA proposed to combat obesity by mandating calorie reductions in all food — perhaps by requiring that all food consist of 50% inert filler. Sure, some people who were REALLY motivated to lose weight would do so. And others would just eat more (some people would HAVE to eat more just to maintain weight), possibly harming themselves in the process.

The FDA produces terrible results even when it tries to do its actual job (approving/banning drugs and foods), and we’d do a lot better just letting the insurance industry use a UL-like system to advise us.

When the FDA receives more power from Congress (or just seizes that power through “administrative rule-making”), the results tend to get even worse … because the real incentives for government agencies tend toward expanding their own powers and increasing their own budgets, not toward “serving the public” on health or any other subject.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

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Well, here we are: After a long presidential campaign full of warnings from each “major” party campaign about the horrible things the other “major” party’s candidate would do to us if elected, Inauguration Day approaches.

On January 20, Donald Trump begins his second (non-consecutive) term as president of the United States.

Within days — possibly within hours — we’ll start finding out how accurate his opponents’ warnings were, and whether or not he really intends to keep his own campaign promises.

To some degree, the warnings and the promises are identical. For example, Trump would say he promises, and his opponents would say he threatens, to launch mass abductions, cagings, and deportations of immigrants.

In other cases, the promises keep changing, often in contradictory ways that leave us just guessing at what he intends to do, especially vis a vis foreign policy.

Some of his supporters expect Trump, based on his own statements, to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine and put Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu on a leash in Gaza.

Others among his supporters expect, again based on his own statements, to double down on US support for Ukraine and/or Israel.

What do I expect? Plenty in general, but nothing in particular other than the usual theatrics from Trump, from “both sides of the aisle” in Congress, and from the media.

I expect, in a word (er, acronym), BOHICA.

That’s an old bit of military slang for the predictable recurrence of negative events: “Bend Over, Here It Comes Again.”

Popular perceptions of Trump tend toward the superlative.

To his supporters, he’s a fearless, iconoclastic, possibly even divinely ordained, leader figure, disrupting the establishment to Make America Great Again.

To his opponents, he’s a whiny, self-dealing criminal in terms of personality, literally Hitler reincarnate and possibly even the Antichrist in terms of politics.

In my opinion, he’s just another politician, albeit one with a flair for the dramatic and a firm grasp of what H.L. Mencken called “the whole aim of practical politics …. to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary.”

Every president, without exception, finds ways to be worse than the previous one. Some presidents also find ways to be better than their predecessors.

All presidents function within a system that’s resistant to change, but tends to drift toward increased presidential power to screw up all our lives.

Trump doesn’t look like an exception to those two rules —  but he’s better than most politicians at inspiring panic among both supporters and opponents.

That’s a job qualification. Panic is what politicians WANT from you. It’s the hook in your lip. Don’t be a fish.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

On January 10, US president-elect Donald Trump officially became a convicted felon as New York judge Juan Merchan sentenced him on 34 counts of falsifying business records to disguise “hush money” payments to porn star Stormy Daniels as legal expenses.

The sentencing followed a 5-4 Supreme Court rejection of Trump’s request that it intervene to postpone the sentencing. That the vote went 5-4 instead of 9-0 constitutes a far greater scandal than anything Trump stands convicted of.

Most elements of the case against Trump — the payments to Daniels before he was elected in 2016, and the charges and trial after he left office in 2021 — relate to periods of time when he was not president.

Even the part that relates to the period of time when he WAS president — his reimbursement, disguised as “legal expenses,” to the attorney who acted as cut-out for the hush money — didn’t concern any “official act” of the presidency conferring immunity for such per last July’s Supreme Court ruling (which itself lacked any convincing constitutional justification).

In effect, the four dissenting justices claim that anyone who has ever been president of the United States should enjoy life-long immunity from criminal prosecution (at both the federal and state level), even for acts committed outside the scope or time frame of that person’s presidency.

So, what were those four justices trying to save Trump from?

The sentence included no prison time, no fine, and no probation requirements.  Merchan’s “unconditional discharge” consisted entirely of entering the convictions into the public record.

That doesn’t mean the convictions bring no consequences.

Under New York law, felons must provide DNA samples to law enforcement.

Under New Jersey law, Trump’s golf courses may lose their liquor licenses.

Under (unconstitutional) federal law, Trump may no longer possess firearms.

And some countries’ regimes deny entry to convicted felons, which in theory could impede his ability, even as president, to visit those countries.

It could have … and, for anyone not named “Donald Trump,” likely would have … been far worse.  He faced, among other possible consequences, up to 20 years in prison.

On the other hand, it seems unlikely that anyone not named “Donald Trump” would have faced prosecution over the matter, or that even he himself would have faced prosecution if he’d lost the 2016 presidential election and faded into obscurity.

Whatever Trump may be wrong about, he’s right that this was all about politics.

And politics makes people — including Supreme Court justices — stupid.

Thomas L. Knapp (X: @thomaslknapp | Bluesky: @knappster.bsky.social | Mastodon: @knappster) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY