I feel so good about the death of the McCain Bill that I went out and bought my first pack of cigarettes in celebration. You'd have to be a complete idiot, or at least be unable to learn from history, to not realize what the McCain Bill would have occasioned had it been put into effect: Increases in teen smoking. Teens start smoking because they're not supposed to. The forbidden nature of it is in large part its main charm. The more tobacco is demonized and denounced as a scourge on society, the more attractive it is to teens wanting to tweak their parents and other adults. This is so obvious that I have to wonder whether McCain and his ilk were ever teenagers themselves. A black market in cigarettes. We are a nation of entrepreneurs, legal and illegal. If the price of cigarettes goes to $6 a pack, it won't take long for some enterprising fellows to siphon off production runs, hijack tobacco trucks, and start selling untaxed cigarettes at discount prices. In pursuit of higher profits, they'll sell adulterated, uninspected cigarettes which will cause even more health problems. There will be drive-bys and turf wars, leaving American youth dead in the streets. And finally, the government will declare a major crime problem, and hire more black-suited stormtroopers to patrol the highways, lurk in the corners and jail people for more non-violent, victimless crimes. A ban on "marketing" cigarettes to teens. How do you enforce this? Fine print that says "Warning – you must be 18 to read this ad?" Only advertise in "US News and World Report?" The reason the politicians want this bill, they tell us, is to "protect our children." This is only the latest in a long line of nutball ideas that the Clinton Administration has cloaked in the rhetoric of saving children. The McCain Bill would have generated over $500 billion in revenue over the next five years, money taken out of your pockets (directly or indirectly) and spent, not on children, but to prop up Social Security, fund more pork, and further entrench criminals like Bud Shuster in our national leadership. Besides, relying on the government to "protect" our children from tobacco is a despicable abdication of our responsibilities as parents. Not only do I not want my kids "protected" by the likes of Bill Clinton, Jesse Helms, Ted Kennedy and Newt Gingrich -- I'm not sure I'd leave them alone in a room with any of this gang for ten minutes. We're to accept parental guidance from crackpots, drunks and fornicators like this? The most disturbing part of all this is the lamb-like silence from the American people while this bill worked its way through Congress. I guess I can't even ask of the politicians and lobbyists behind the bill, "How stupid do you think we are?" Apparently, we're stupid enough to keep electing them to office and begging them to save us from ourselves. If you want to smoke, smoke. If you don't want to smoke, don't. It's called freedom. Don't let the thugs in Congress take it away from you.

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