California hospitals are seduced by the New Tobacco Industry. This industry makes nothing that it sells to those who voluntarily buy. Instead, it feeds off a river of cash, a Leviathan wreathed in smoke rising from the billions of dollars that the government extracts from the Old Tobacco Industry and its customers every year.

Housed in university faculties, private consulting practices, trial lawyers’ offices, advertising agencies, and departments of health, the New Tobacco Industry rides a nicotine-stained merry-go-round. The more tobacco
money it gets, the more it can afford to invest in new lobbying efforts for another round, despite questionable indications of its success at influencing smoking cessation. Indeed, the California Department of Health Services’ Tobacco Control Section (TCS), a body entirely dependent on confiscated tobacco funding, seeks a “tobacco-free California.” Obviously, expecting the number of smokers to fall to zero is absurd; stating it as an objective gives fair warning that the New Tobacco Industry will never be sated.

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