Impeccable Logic

Via Mark Binker's N&R reporter's blog, we learn that the reason our new Senator Kay Hagan is opposing the bill that will allow the Federal Drug Administration to regulate tobacco products is because people already know how dangerous tobacco products are.

Huh?

Saith the senator, "We need to have FDA focus on monitoring our food, our drug safety, rather than taking on a product that I think people know is inherently unsafe."

Okay. If it's inherently unsafe, no need to regulate it, right?

Would that logic also apply, Senator, to heroin, say, or to a certain hallucinogenic salvia that the N.C. Senate intends to ban? Or to 12-year-olds getting their hands on vodka?

The actual logic behind her political decision might have a good deal more to do with not bucking a huge (and ruthless) N.C. industry, which peddles (incidentally) an inherently unsafe product.