By Mylesclark96 [CC BY-SA 4.0 ], from Wikimedia Commons

Nitasha Tiku of Wired reports on three lawsuits against JUUL Labs, makers of the JUUL e-cigarette device. The unifying complaint, in brief, is that nicotine is addictive, that the users are addicted, and that their addictions are the company’s fault. There are quite a few problems with these lawsuits.

First, we’ve known for decades if not centuries that nicotine is addictive.  The US government made it official in 1988 with the Surgeon General’s report “The Health Consequences of Smoking: Nicotine Addiction,” but my parents were certainly telling me so, and unsuccessfully urging me to not take up smoking, a decade before that.

School anti-smoking curricula warn kids about, among other things, nicotine’s addictive properties. We’re constantly bombarded by public service announcements on the subject. It’s on billboards. It’s in magazines. It’s on TV. To not know that  nicotine is addictive, one must have actively resisted listening to all the people telling one that nicotine is addictive.

Secondly, plaintiffs in two of the three cases admit that they were addicted to nicotine before they began using JUUL’s product to get away from their existing habits of smoking tobacco cigarettes. JUUL didn’t hook them. They were hooked before they ever chose JUUL as their preferred drug dealer.

The third case was filed on behalf of a minor. His mother’s attorneys claim that he’s so addicted that he “is unable to avoid Juuling” despite draconian parental and institutional measures.  It was illegal for that minor to procure a JUUL device. He did so anyway.  JUUL Labs requires proof that a buyer is 21 or older for direct sales (even though the legal age in many states is just 18), so he either got the device elsewhere or lied to get it from JUUL.

Yes, nicotine is addictive. The plaintiffs knew (or, in the minor’s case, at least should have known) that it was addictive before JUUL ever entered their lives. All JUUL did was offer them an arguably safer, and probably less socially awkward, way of getting their fixes.

These lawsuits are the equivalent of a heroin addict suing a needle exchange or methadone clinic for helping her avoid some of the worst potential consequences of her problem with alternative delivery methods for her drug of choice.

To narrow down the obvious theme: Their problems. Their choices. Their actions. Not JUUL’s. These lawsuits are, plain and simple, just opportunistic money grabs that should be peremptorily dismissed.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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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By Kamenev (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

“It’s impossible to effectually outlaw guns,” I wrote in 2015, “without also outlawing writing, speaking and thinking about guns.” I was referring to a US State Department censorship order requiring Cody Wilson and Defense Distributed to remove 3D printing files for the plastic “Liberator” pistol from the Internet.

With the help of the Second Amendment Foundation, Wilson and his firm sued against the order.  With the help of the First Amendment, they won. The US government realized it had a losing case and settled. Effective August 1, America goes back to having a free press vis a vis guns.

A free press plus rapidly proliferating DIY production technology equals the final nail in the coffin of “gun control” as a practical notion. Not that it ever really was one, what with more than 250 million guns already in the hands of more than 100 million Americans. But now it’s no longer just a lop-sided contest, it’s a done deal. “Gun control” is over.

Wilson hasn’t been idle while awaiting his big win. He’s gone from plans for 3D gun printing in plastic to offering a consumer-priced CNC milling machine — the Ghost Gunner — with software that can turn a block of metal into the frame of an AR-15 rifle or a .45 semi-automatic pistol right in anyone’s home workshop. No serial number. No permit. No background check. That’s that. We’re done here.

As the clock runs forward, it’s now also going to run backward. Because 3D printers and CNC mills will make whatever they’re programmed to make, consider the National Firearms Act of 1934 repealed. If there aren’t already CAD files out there telling home milling machinery how to turn out machine guns and silencers, there soon will be. You don’t have to like it. That’s how it is whether you like it or not.

For decades, “gun control” advocates have, from behind the sturdy shield of the First Amendment, agitated for willful misinterpretation of, or even repeal of, the Second. They still have that shield, as well they should. What they no longer have is any plausible case that they can get their way.

So, are “gun control” advocates ready for a ceasefire? Are they willing to start discussing real ways of achieving their supposed goal — reducing violence in American society — instead of continuing to pursue their lost cause?

I doubt it. Lost causes are both more fun and more profitable than getting serious. But let’s hope.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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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According to a new poll conducted by Ipsos  in partnership with the University of Virginia Center for Politics, 51% of respondents agree (15% “strongly” and 36% “somewhat”) with the statement “American elections are fair and open.”

The Ipsos headline characterizes that percentage as “only half.” That’s akin to noting that “only half” of Americans believe the Earth is a flat disc of provolone cheese, balanced atop the fingertips of seven celestial belly dancers. “Only” half?

Republicans, males, people over 55, people making more than $50,000 a year, and whites are more likely to believe this bizarre claim than Democrats, females, younger voters, the under-$50k crowd, and non-whites, but even among the latter buy-in is disturbingly high.

That over-55 demographic is plenty old enough to remember that after Ross Perot made it onto the presidential debate stage in 1992 (as an independent) and 1996 (as the Reform Party’s nominee), the Commission on Presidential Debates added a 15% polling bar to its rules to ensure that only Republicans and Democrats need apply.

Every four years, the CPD — established after the National Commission on Elections recommended  “[t]urning over the sponsorship of Presidential debates to the two major parties” — makes millions in illegal in-kind campaign contributions to Republican and Democratic presidential and vice-presidential candidates, and no others, in the form of joint campaign commercials falsely advertised as “debates.”

Most disturbing: 49% of self-described “independent” voters — voters deprived of choice by a tangled web of ballot access laws expressly designed to keep third party and independent candidates off the ballot and campaign finance laws that keep them marginalized if they get over those ballot access hurdles — still believe in the Fair and Open Election Fairy.

American elections started becoming less fair and less open in the late 19th century when state governments started printing “Australian” ballots and controlling access to those ballots. Before that, American voters hand-wrote their ballots, orally dictated their ballots to election officials if they couldn’t write, or used pre-printed ballots provided to them by their parties or candidates of choice.

While movements for more fair and more open elections have made some advances since then — for example,  constitutional amendment to provide for female suffrage, and partial gains versus attempts to suppress the African-American vote — we’ve still got a long way to go.

As champions of addiction recovery like to say, the first step is admitting we have a problem. Fairies aren’t real. And American elections aren’t fair and open. Yet.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) 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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