SACRAMENTO, CA - Monday's USA Today brings news about the last straw: A story about how more and more states (including my adopted home state of Virginia) are cracking down on direct wine shipments, citing tax evasion and other silly pretexts. For an exiled Californian like me, direct shipments are the only way to keep up with some small wineries that don't enjoy wide retail distribution. It is even more important for the small wineries themselves, many of whom depend on direct shipments for a major portion of their total sales. No other mail order product-all of which we are supposed to (but typically don't) pay local sales taxes for-is being treated by state officials like illicit contraband.

Complaints about the "new puritanism" are not new, nor is the prediction that adult beverages would quickly follow tobacco on the puritanical hit list. In the case of cigarettes, it is easy to see that prospective government regulation of nicotine will spur a new "roll-your-own" trend. I have already seen some leading edge Gen-Xers with superb rolling skills in a local coffee house. (Suggestion: Buy stock in a cigarette rolling paper company like Zig-Zag.) Those of us whose vice is the fruit of the grape are not so lucky; we can hardly plant vineyards and crushing facilities in our back yard (though good basement beer is quite feasible these days).

What's next? Fat food? Maybe. Don't laugh. During the health care debate back in 1994 a health organization in Atlanta called for a tax of one cent per gram of fat in all foods to pay for Hillarycare. There was no discrimination between doughnuts and french fries (which are essentially just fat-delivery platforms) and other kinds of fat sources. At least it was a Flat Fat Tax.

Forget food or even Florida sunshine (skin cancer). I think I know where all this is really heading: Cars. The new puritans won't be happy until we are all riding mass transit. Think of how much a car is like a cigarette. Driving is addictive. (The L.A. Times had a cartoon on Sunday with Uncle Sam depicted as a junkie, with an oil-IV stuck in his arm.) Second-hand smog from cars harms our children. Driving causes aggression and crime; if we banned cars, we would end drive-by shootings, wouldn't we? Increasingly we are even being told that driving is morally suspect. You don't even have to go as far as the loonies behind "Critical Mass" (the bike riders who clog up the roads in San Francisco to protest the auto) to see this attitude. I saw a grown congressman on C-span a while ago saying that people "would like to do the right thing" and not drive their car to work. Come again: Driving your car to work is wrong? Yet this kind of attitude passes without even a raised eyebrow these days.

You heard it here first, folks. Forget the NRA. I'm signing up as a life member with the Auto Club.

-By Steven Hayward