Enact Prohibition

What do you call a ritual in which masses of people take steps to vacate their human shells and end their lives on Earth? Heaven’s Gate? No, a smoke break.

Thirty-nine members of a California cult don’t qualify as “masses,” but the millions of people who choose suicide by tobacco do. A bigger difference, though, is that the cultists, or their survivors, would never get away with suing the pudding makers whose product they laced with poison and washed down with vodka at Rancho Santa Fe.

In contrast, America’s major tobacco companies are scrambling to negotiate a limit on their liability in return for paying billions into a compensation fund and accepting restrictions on the way they advertise and market their product.

Which, of course, they would continue to make and sell.

Smokers have made their choice with clear warnings of the deadly risks; all should bear personal responsibility for the consequences.

Meanwhile, it is hypocrisy for state and federal governments to participate directly or indirectly in these negotiations, unless they perform their own duty: Namely, outlaw such a lethal product which just happens to generate millions in tax revenues.

, DataTimes The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Doug Floyd For the editorial board