As government tightens the noose around the legal cigarette market by vastly increasing taxes and controls, businessmen in the black market are making up for this crime. Poor smokers, demonized by the prohibitionists, can now get decent-priced packs. This outrages the tax parasites and their mouthpieces in the media. Why, not only do such discount smokes cost states and feds an estimated $5 billion in loot–money left in the private economy to build prosperity–but they also subsidize…need I say it?…terrorists. Oh, and here is the real outrage, according to the Miami Herald’s English-language edition: smugglers acting in the tradition of John Hancock and other free-traders “face only a maximum five-year federal sentence, and sometimes get less.” Lethally inject them!

The Best of Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.