Over the years, the campaign against smoking degenerated from a much needed educational effort into an assertion of state power, a means of moneygrubbing (both by governments and various anti-smoking activist groups), and an opportunity for moral preening by the fiercer anti-smokers. There are few better examples of this than the way that EU regulators prohibit the sale of Swedish (noncarcinogenic) snus anywhere in the bloc other than in Sweden — a decision, given the close association between snus and low rates of smoking in that country, that will come with a heavy toll.

Another example comes from efforts on both ...

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