Prohibition Lite on the way

In a piece on the Reason website, J.D. Tuccille posits that there’s no particular reason to think that smokers will be happier with denatured tobacco than drinkers have been with weak beer.
In examining the US Food and Drug Administration’s proposal to lower nicotine in cigarettes to minimally or non-addictive levels, Tuccille says that low-nicotine cigarettes sound a lot like the 3.2 percent beer that plagued much of the country after Prohibition. ‘Nobody was happy with the diluted swill, and they tolerated it only if they couldn’t smuggle in something better,’ he writes. ‘Most places have since dumped it, indicating that a taste for the unadulterated product remained strong even after years of restrictions.’
Tuccille’s piece ends by saying that FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb’s proposal to mandate low-nicotine cigarettes looks a lot like other well-intentioned but presumptuous efforts to substitute the will of regulators for the desires of the public – Prohibition Lite. And like all such efforts, he says, it’s likely to get people turning up their noses and looking for something better.
Tuccille’s piece is at: https://reason.com/archives/2018/03/26/fdas-low-nicotine-cigarette-scheme-is-an.