A forthcoming decision from the Supreme Court will protect or kill the right of Internet commerce, and therefore our freedom to buy cigarettes on line.
A decision in favour of freedom, of course, is seen as a serious setback for “public health” and other control freaks. The opening line of the article, for example, is intended to set your perception of the news and leaves no doubt on which side of liberty the writer is: “The Supreme Court took up a little-noted case Wednesday that could prove a landmark in the era of Internet commerce and deal a setback to states that want to keep cigarettes, drugs and other harmful products out of the hands of minors.”
Minors who decide to smoke find cigarettes anyway, and it is immensely better that they find cigarettes than crack cocaine – although, believe it or not, many health fanatics question that scale of values.
In reality a favourable Supreme Court decision would protect the freedom of commerce and legitimize the Internet as carrier of that freedom. Furthermore, the ability to buy cigarettes and other goods on line makes it difficult for individual states to go wild with cigarette taxation, and even more difficult for “public health” to uproot the smoking culture. Let’s keep in mind that the ONLY thing that keeps tobacco legal is the sheer mass of those who enjoy it – a populace that continues to be large and growing. Its growth, by the way, means we have a chance of returning to liberty by making tobacco control too expensive to be sustained.
Furthermore, a favourable decision would protect the trucking and shipping industry from becoming an extension of the criminal activities of “public health”. Forcing delivery services to check on who is receiving a particular product disrupts "the timely and cost-effective flow of packages to our businesses and homes," lawyers for the shippers correctly said.
“The case also involves the issue of uncollected state taxes. One study found that three-quarters of Internet tobacco sellers say they will not report cigarette sales to tax-collection officials. A private research firm found states lose as much as $1.4 billion annually in uncollected tobacco taxes through Internet sales.”
Hooray for the Internet tobacco sellers! Let’s not forget that a pack of cigarettes is actually worth less than a dollar, including the profit of the manufacturer. There is a simple solution to put an end to tax dodgers, and it’s not prohibition: stop the criminal taxation of cigarettes, and stop listening to the “public health” gangsters who push it with false statistics on mortality attributions. If taxation were honest and the product affordable, there would be no Internet sellers in the first place.
The problem with antitobacco bastards is that they persecute smokers and then want smokers to be punished for the problems the bastards have created – as long as we put up with them, that is.
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