This may have been a bizarre way to raise a tax, but it was the only way to route the new revenues to the charities themselves. This story is replicated several times as Bennett and DiLorenzo chronicle the growing involvement of anti-smoking health charities in the political process. The book, not surprisingly, spends a fair amount of time rebutting claims made by these anti-smoking forces on such issues as the risks of secondhand smoke, the impact of smoking on government budgets, and how smokers perceive the risks of their habit. Bennett and DiLorenzo don't focus only on the smoking issue. A free society is based, in part, on drawing clear lines between various social institutions, be they businesses, governments, families, or charities.
Governments have a unique role to play in our lives, as do the other institutions.
CancerScam tells a cautionary tale. Jefferson understood this. He would see no justification for forcing anyone to finance campaigns against the right of smokers to do what they want with their own lives and property, and neither do Jim Bennett and Tom DiLorenzo. John Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation in Raleigh, North Carolina.