The Heartland Institute

For thousands of years in the Americas, and about 500 years pretty much everywhere else, tobacco has been a friend to mankind. It has been used to relax, to stimulate, and to treat various ailments. It has been a vital part of rituals both social and spiritual. It has been used as currency. Whole communities have been ...

A member of The Heartland Institute’s board of directors called me recently to ask why I spend time defending smokers. It’s a lost cause, he said, and it surely doesn’t win us any friends. I know smoking is widely condemned and that banning smoking in restaurants and bars is all the rage among state and local elected ...

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This year on New Year’s Day, I had to decide once again whether to stop smoking. Like millions of other smokers, I opted to continue to smoke but to “cut back” to a level that poses less threat to my health, wealth, and marriage. This will not satisfy the nannies at the American Lung Association, Campaign for Tobacco ...

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At the Northwestern train station in downtown Chicago, commuters are met with a billboard that reads: “Odds of dying in a car crash: 6,200 - 1; dying from smoking: 3 - 1.” The ad, paid for by the Illinois and Chicago departments of public health, is obviously meant to encourage smokers to quit. But is it accurate? Apples ...

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My essay last month, titled "Lifting the skirts of 'progressive' demonizers," generated more letters, phone calls, and e-mail messages than any of my previous efforts. Many of you, it seems, share my concern over the campaigns underway to demonize unpopular products and industries. (Either that, or the racy headline caught your ...

"The arts of Power and its minions are the same in all countries and in all ages. It marks its victim; denounces it; and excites the public odium and the public hatred, to conceal its own abuses and encroachments." -- Henry Clay, U.S. Senate March 14, 1834 American business and consumers are being assaulted by ...

On June 17, 43 Republicans and 3 Democrats in the U.S. Senate voted to kill a bill that would have raised taxes on cigarettes by $1.10 per pack and restricted cigarette advertising. That this was a major victory for the tobacco industry has been widely reported. Less widely noted, however, is the victory for truth and freedom ...

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If you don't smoke, you may think the commotion over tobacco in recent months doesn't matter to you. You would be wrong. Whether or not you smoke, the outcome of the war on tobacco will affect your civil and economic liberties in major ways. If tobacco companies are compelled to pay individual smokers or their families ...

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