Republican senator seeks to outlaw tobacco

Read complete article: The Hill, 2009-06-05
Author: Alexander Bolton

Review:
A Republican senator who is also a doctor is calling for a new era of Prohibition outlawing cigarette smoking and other tobacco use.

The unlikely demand comes from Senator Tom Coburn (R-Oklahoma), one of the staunchest free-market conservatives in the Senate.

Coburn, one of two doctors in the Senate, is well-aware of the health risks that come with smoking cigarettes and chewing tobacco.

What we should be doing is banning tobacco, Coburn said in a recent Senate floor speech he gave during a debate on a tobacco regulation bill. Nobody up here has the courage to do that. It is a big business. There are millions of Americans who are addicted to nicotine. And even if they are not addicted to the nicotine, they are addicted to the habit.

Coburn made his case against the bill because he said it would send a mixed message to the FDA, which is charged with ensuring the safety of food and drugs. Coburn's argument is that there's nothing safe about tobacco and that it would make more sense for the Drug Enforcement Administration or the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to regulate it.

Coburn suggests that putting cigarettes and chew under the authority of an agency that to this point has been tasked with ensuring product safety would only make it tougher to ban tobacco someday.

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