A Surgeon General Who Thinks Like a Drug Czar

At yesterday's congressional hearing on smokeless tobacco as a safer alternative to cigarettes, Surgeon General Richard Carmona announced that he favors prohibition of all tobacco products. After staking out a position more extreme than most anti-smoking activists are willing to endorse, he conceded that "legislation is not my field." Neither is economics, apparently, since Carmona is not worried about the disastrous effects of creating a black market big enough to serve some 45 million American smokers.

The surgeon general also seems to be unfamiliar with the epidemiological data concerning the health effects of smokeless tobacco. According to The Washington Post, "He was adamant in saying there is no evidence that smokeless tobacco causes less harm than cigarettes." That's a claim that could only be made by someone who had not bothered to look at the evidence.