Rep. Ron Paul Opposes Tobacco Tyrannyon House Floor 6/12/09

http://www.house.gov/paul
http://CampaignForLiberty.com

"It's so exasperating at times because we always have two proposals here, or we have two ways of solving problems or dealing with tobacco. For decades, what did we do? We subsidized tobacco, and now we want to prohibit tobacco. Why don't we just let the people decide. This whole idea of either having to subsidize something or prohibit something shows a shallowness that I think we ought to challenge.

"One part of this bill that I find particularly bad, but it is pervasive in so much of what we do, about 100 years ago we took the First Amendment and freedom of speech and chopped it into two pieces. We have political speech. Of course we like that. We're in the business of politics. But we take commercial speech, and we put it over here, and we regulate the living daylights out of commercial speech. That's not a First Amendment. That's chopping freedom in half, and that just leads to more problems. But this will lead to prohibition, and it won't work. This will just give us a lot more trouble.

"You say, Well, how will these problems be handled if we just permit people to advertise? Well, you are not allowed to commit fraud; you are not allowed to commit slander; you are not allowed to commit any libel or slander or fraud. So there are prohibitions. But this approach can't work. It is assumed that people are total idiots, that they won't respond to education, that we have to be the nanny state. We want to expand the war on drugs, which is a total failure.

"And look at what happened to the prohibition of alcohol. You say, Well, no, this is not going to be a prohibition. It is going to be prohibition. This is a form of prohibition. When you have prohibition or even approach prohibition, what do you create? You create the black market. We will see the black market come. Already the taxes are opening up the doors of the black market.

"All I ask for is people to reconsider, believe that freedom, self-reliance and individualism can solve these problems a lot better than a bunch of politicians, bureaucrats and tobacco police here from Washington, D.C."
--Ron Paul

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• America
• tobacco
• cra
• cigar
• freedom

[DrRonPaul]

Just an amazing speech....these anti cigarette people infuriate me to no end.

[schoolboy4321]

Reliable libertarian Dr. Paul....Protector of the Constitution and freedom of the people. Ron Paul 2012!