SFGate has posted a smoking critique of those who lament the new tobacco tax in an op-ed called Give It Up, Smoker / Death, cancer, rotted teeth, emphysema won’t do it, but 62 cents will?. Example:

Also lost amid the outcry: how the same legislation that cranked up the tobacco tax also gives long-overdue powers back to the FDA to regulate Big Tobacco — powers, by the way, that Bush twice vetoed, in the name of corporate cronyism and general immoral idiocy.

Is that the real smokers’ lament? “Damn you, Obama administration, working to regulate the chemicals in my poisons and trying to make me marginally safer! Can’t I just get lung cancer and emphysema and be a massive burden on my friends, family and the health care industry in peace, without government meddling?” Wait, that can’t be right.

Amusing view of regulation.