The US and Britain: The Attack of the Nanny State?

Two weeks ago, the US Senate approved legislation empowering the federal government with sweeping powers to oversee tobacco products. In essence, Uncle Sam will regulate matters such as the amount of nicotine in a cigarette, not to mention how the cigarette is packaged, signed, and marketed. After 50 years of warnings from the surgeon general, Big Tobacco has finally succumbed to a smoking President. Now, if only the National Rifle Association would fall at the feet of a President with a smoking gun, maybe we would get some sanity over the interpretation of the Second Amendment's "right to bear arms".

I have to declare an interest. Not only am I a reformed smoker – I was a 60-a-day man back in the 1970s, but I am also a trustee of a cancer charity. Therefore, you will not find me defending the rights of the tobacco industry or cigarette smokers. In fact, on a trip to Australia some ten years ago, I welcomed the typical Aussie frankness. The message on a packet of their cigs was to the point: “Smoking Kills”.

However, will Americans be asking a bigger question? Do they want a nanny state, where risk taking is minimized to cover obtuseness, as the government seeks to protect the citizen from everything that they, not the citizen, considers potentially dangerous? Will tobacco regulation be the thin end of the wedge?

In Britain, The Nanny State by Robert Huntington examined the almost obsessive nannying of the Tony Blair and, briefly, Gordon Brown Governments. Huntington writes scathingly about the chief proponents of the movement and argues that bodies such as the Health and Safety Executive, with its army of "five-a-day [fruit and vegetable] coordinators" and "smoking cessation officers", are merely a bunch of conmen who have seized a slice of the Treasury's cash reserves without doing anything productive in return. Huntington argues that nannying is ultimately dangerous, as freedoms are continually eroded while funds and resources are increasingly wasted.

One wonders whether the freedom issue over tobacco legislation might reach the Supreme Court and, if so, if the legislation be rejected towards the end of Obama’s first term. In the economic sphere, I have been astonished at the acceptance by mainstream America of the Federal Government’s takeover of the banking system, a move that is socialist from any viewpoint and attacks the norms of American business freedom and ideology. In the social sphere, will the Obama administration be tempted to make further inroads into American life on the basis of safety?

The proposed healthcare legislation will get a much harder ride in Congress than the new tobacco laws, where I am sure Republican objections to charges of nannying will find support in some Democrat ranks. And, fortunately for the US, separation of powers prevents the executive from ramming through unwelcome legislation. Nevertheless, Congressmen might look at the British experience before they decide to get carried away with petty regulations, passed in the fervour of “we know better than you.”