This is a Cadeo Special Podcast. I'm Caleb Brown. The FDA is about to be handed the

power to regulate tobacco, but it's not clear that Congress's decision is about

anyone's health, least of all smokers.

While Democrats might prefer to have the climate change debate be governed by sound science,

why doesn't it govern the debate over tobacco regulation?

Peter Van Doren, Cato Institute Senior Fellow, and editor of Regulation magazine, comments.

The Democrats, as you know, are very much in favor of this when it comes to climate change. They argue that

Republicans and Republican administrations are ignoring something called

the evidence from scientists that if we don't do something about CO2 emissions

the world will end and therefore science ought to dictate policy outcomes.

Now I have my own corals with that but I just thought it'd be interesting today to show how inconsistent political actors are in their views towards science. They basically like science and scientists if they're sort of on their

side in general and they don't actually care about evidence if it doesn't actually

help them out and I think smoking is a very interesting thing and I want to I want to talk about three sorts of evidence today by economists on do smokers pay for the cost they create for others, that is the classic notion of an

externality. Two, how aware are smokers of risks? That is, is there any rationale

for regulation because smokers are unaware of the risk that they incur

and therefore for the past 40 years we've had what you might call a disclosure regime which is you have warnings on

packages of tobacco products saying if you use this product you're endangering

your health well how's that worked are smokers unaware or aware of the risks and do we need to do anything more other than what we've done from a disclosure point of view?

And then three, the main effect of regulation of tobacco has been to increase prices.

We now have a variety of taxes on tobacco that funds some health care programs, the children's

health care program being one example and the Medicare settlement with the states to pay for, allegedly to pay for smokers, health care costs, has led to a severe increase in the price of cigarettes to pay for that

cash flow that's going to the states in that settlement.

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