A federal judge has rejected New York City’s planned campaign to scare people into quitting smoking with grisly advertisements near where cigarettes are sold, saying the effort is laudable but pre-empted by federal law.
U.S. District Judge Jed Rakoff says “even merchants of morbidity are entitled to the full protection of the law.”
On Wednesday, he blocked a city campaign that would require the ads be posted wherever tobacco products are sold by Saturday.
Good. I still maintain that if cigarettes are so painfully devastating and expensive to healthcare costs then they should be banned. Instead, the government talks out of both ends of its mouth, saying on one hand it’s devastating to people and the economy, and then on the other taxing it and basking in its revenue.
I hate sin taxes more than anything else the government does.