Tobacco has a long history in our region. Early English settlers in Virginia and the Carolinas largely built their economies around growing the crop and exporting it back to Europe. Tobacco was from the New World, so it was new to Europeans. And they quickly took to it, as nicotine releases quick bursts of adrenaline, endorphins, and dopamine — and because it’s highly addictive.

Since those early days, North Carolina’s economy has relied on tobacco as a key element of its agricultural industry, which continues to be the state’s biggest industry. But could all of that be coming to an end?

In Joe Biden’s final days as president, his FDA has released a directive that would mandate 95% lower nicotine in cigarettes and many other nicotine products.

According to a recent study commissioned by the John Locke Foundation, North Carolina has 822 tobacco farms, generating $557 million in revenue and adding $197 million to the state’s GDP. The study’s author, Professor James Prieger of Pepperdine University’s School of Public Policy, said a mandate for low-nicotine products would lead to a loss of around 100,000 jobs in North Carolina.

Liberty and the common good

The logic behind the mandate is worth thinking about. Many supporters of the move cite data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention stating that cigarette smoking is the No. 1 preventable cause of death and disease in the United States, causing 480,000 deaths per year. It also adds billions in additional costs to our healthcare system.

So, ignoring the economic downsides, it may seem like a clear win for the common good to attack this head on — saving lives and shoring up our strained healthcare resources. But the principle of regulating harmful individual free choices for the greater good should not be accepted without serious reflection.

The second leading cause of preventable death and disease is obesity. Would similar mandates to limit free choices by federal fiat be wise here too? Should high-sugar foods be regulated or banned? Should there be penalties for lack of exercise?

The US Surgeon General recently said alcohol is not as safe in small amounts as once thought (contrary to the old adage that a glass of wine or two a day is good for the heart). Instead, the science is pointing to alcohol being a serious cancer risk and unhealthy in any amount. Should we increase regulations on it, maybe even go back to alcohol prohibition?

I’m of course being a little hyperbolic. But what should the limiting principle be on government controlling individual behavior when it comes to protecting public health or the common good in general?

While it’s understandably frustrating to public-health officials, I’d argue individual liberty should be given heavy priority when balancing these policy areas. If the public-health impact is wider than the individual making the decision, then that becomes another matter, one of “externalities,” as economists would say, since someone external to the decision is being impacted. But smoking cigarettes does not have much direct impact on third parties, especially since smoking inside public places has all but disappeared, making it easy to avoid second-hand smoke.

Alcohol, like other intoxicating substances, has a much larger risk of externalities. For example, Boston University research found 48% of homicide offenders drank alcohol before committing their crime. Consequently, they also found that when late-night sales of alcohol at bars was ended in a Baltimore, Maryland neighborhood, homicides in the area went down 51% in the first month, and 40% over the whole year.

About a third of all vehicle deaths each year involve someone inebriated on alcohol (over 0.8% BAC). For this reason, we ban drunk driving.

These kind of targeted regulations (banning indoor smoking, late-night alcohol purchases, and driving while drunk) to protect the public at large make more sense than targeting individual choices around drinking or smoking overall. But removing 95% of nicotine from cigarettes and related tobacco products tramples on individual choice and is regulation with a hatchet not a scalpel.

Nicotine is the drug in tobacco that both creates the euphoric feeling and relieves withdrawal symptoms for the smoker. The idea that they will continue to smoke tobacco products when they no longer have nicotine makes as much sense as assuming everyone will continue coming to the neighborhood sports bar to watch the game if they switch to only non-alcoholic beer.

Black market

Instead, what smokers are likely to do is transition to another product with nicotine, whether sold legally or through the black market, which will almost certainly meet this demand. Presumably, neighboring countries, especially those to our south, would not limit nicotine to this degree, leaving tobacco companies free to sell full-strength cigarettes there.

Organized crime organizations, that appear to have little trouble flooding our streets with fentanyl and other drugs, will immediately begin smuggling in old-fashioned cigarettes. A lot of the justification for the FDA’s move is that most people start smoking when they are not yet legally able to buy the products. The thinking goes that if they experiment as a teen with super-low nicotine cigarettes, they are less likely to become lifelong users.

However, if the market for full-strength cigarettes goes from being the local gas station (that usually checks IDs) to the black market (which does not), it may, ironically, end up giving teens greater access.

And how strictly will the mandate be enforced? If someone is found smoking a Mexican Marlboro rather than American Marlboro, will that be a serious offense? Society has been trying to decriminalize smoking marijuana for decades, on the understanding that non-violent offenders shouldn’t get caught up in the system over a personal decision to smoke a certain plant. I can’t image we’d go harder on those smoking tobacco than marijuana.

Up to President Trump

Ultimately, as many media outlets have pointed out, the fate of this new mandate will come down to what incoming President Donald Trump wants. Trump is notoriously straight laced on things like smoking and drinking, but he is also favorable to business and personal choice in most cases. If, somehow, the FDA mandate does proceed, I believe history will judge the action similarly to alcohol prohibition — a well-intentioned overreach that ultimately had to be rolled back.