Where There's Smoke, There's Government Intrusion

John Lott reports:

This is still a free country, right? Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed legislation to more closely regulate the wages that firms pay workers and to more strictly regulate tobacco products by putting them under FDA supervision.

The Los Angeles City Council also approved a one-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in a 32-square-mile low-income area in the city; the poor, after all, have “above-average rates of obesity” and must be protected from themselves.

Perhaps the government may just want to ask people if they are poor before we let them enter certain restaurants.

Barack Obama promises a national ban on smoking in public places. Such micro-managing of people's behavior will likely only get worse, as anyone who has been to countries such as Sweden can attest.

When I visited Sweden in back in 1979, Swedes were worried that binge drinkers were damaging their health. But shouldn’t how much people drink in the privacy of their own home be their own business? Not to other Swedes, who worried that the government health care system meant they would have to pick up others’ medical costs.

The Nanny State.