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Cui Bono?
By Kate Burch
The Food and Drug Administration, through its newly-released
regulations on electronic cigarettes, sounded the death knell for the
numerous start-up businesses that are developing and marketing the
devices. The regulations forbid marketing of an e-cigarette until
the FDA has approved an application that provides proof that the
product: 1.) is safer than regular cigarettes; 2.) that it helps
smokers to quit; and that 3.) these benefits are substantial enough to
outweigh the risk of e-cigarette “vaping” being taken up by
nonsmokers. The costs of compliance with these regulations are
acknowledged by the FDA to be “burdensome,” with costs of at least
$330,000 for each product! What small business wishing to market
at electronic cigarette can survive in this situation? The
big tobacco companies, which have been gobbling up the e-cigarette
market, can survive, of course. Hmmmm….
Worse, the new regulations seem to be totally wrong-headed in that they
are meant to actively discourage development and use of e-cigarettes,
which seem clearly to be a much safer alternative to tobacco
smoking. A barrier is erected that impedes research
and development of improvements to the technology so that it could be
even more effective in lowering the health risks of tobacco use.
This is just the latest of a number of regulations imposed, purportedly
in the public interest, that benefit entrenched interests or political
favorites and do no or little good, and often great harm.
Consider the ethanol mandate, for one. It has been convincingly
shown that producing ethanol from corn consumes more energy than the
energy saved by using it to replace part of the gasoline for motor
vehicles, and that it damages the engines, besides. Diverting
this vital food crop has also resulted in the deaths of many from
starvation, I read. Distortion of markets is another result of
this real ripoff that benefits a few powerful agricultural interests.
“Green energy” is another example. Remember the frustrated and
outraged citizens who were told that they must stop using incandescent
light bulbs. The dangerous “curly fry” fluorescent, now
thankfully being superseded by vastly superior LED technology, was the
product of General Electric, a huge political donor.
The Dodd-Frank legislation, which was supposed to be a means of
financial “reform,” was almost certainly the main driver of the 2008
financial crisis. There is much evidence of financial benefits to
politicians and their friends associated with Dodd-Frank.
I could cite many more. Some of the ridiculous and harmful
regulations and laws foisted upon us result, no doubt, from
legislators’ ignorance or lack of sophistication about the issues
involved, especially the scientific aspects. Other times, laws
and regulations are passed out of hysterical overreaction to dangers or
the hyping of trivial or nonexistent danger. The banning of DDT,
a time-tested and relatively benign pesticide when properly used,
occurred in reaction to a non-factual scare-book, “Silent
Spring.” Unavailability of DDT has been directly responsible for
millions of needless malaria deaths around the world.
Probably always a major contributor, though, is the fallen nature of
human beings: vain, venal, and envious. Albert Jay Nock, American
Libertarian author, educational theorist, and social critic, wrote more
than eighty years ago, “Taking the State wherever found, striking into
its history at any point, one sees no way to differentiate the
activities of its founders, administrators and beneficiaries from those
of a professional criminal class.”
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