When there's an outbreak of deaths or illnesses from injected street drugs, do public health authorities demand diabetics and doctors stop using syringes? Of course not. Yet a host of public officials — from President Trump to Gov. Andrew Cuomo to members of the Squad — are taking just that sort of approach in responding to the spate of vaping-related illnesses and deaths around the country.

Cuomo, for example, went on a tear Sunday about vaping, calling it "a burgeoning health crisis" and threatening to declare an emergency to ban flavored nicotine e-cigarettes. That followed Trump's announcement last Wednesday of federal plans to prohibit such devices.

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When products could save lives, it's important for people to be informed about those benefits, along with the risks. Conversely, it's harmful and immoral to spread misinformation that negatively affects public perception of life-saving products and discourages their use. Consider, for example, the unscientific, ideology-driven campaign against e-cigarettes, which deliver nicotine through vapor rather than smoke.

There is overwhelming scientific evidence that it's best to quit nicotine use entirely. And kids shouldn't vape. But some 34 million adults still smoke in the U.S., so we must offer them more-appealing, lower-risk alternatives than currently available pharmaceutical products which are largely ineffective.

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NEWS

"To protect the environment, our health, and promote the social good we have to live more austere lives."

How often have we heard something along these lines? The problem is, it's not a very effective approach.

Tackling the world's most intractable problems, preserving freedoms and making life better for everyone requires something often overlooked by many who are sincerely interested in making the world better. If advocates for austere living promote bleeding heart liberalism, I believe we should stand for bleeding heart market advocacy.

For a better world, we need more innovation.

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Only 51 percent of Americans think socialism would be a bad thing for the country, according to a Gallup poll released in May. Although the 2020 election will be a big test for whether socialism gains a foothold, freedom-lovers should be worried more broadly than at the polls.

The slide towards socialism is taking root not only at the ballot box, but also from the jury box. Plaintiffs' lawyers are having wild success in their campaign to redistribute wealth from innovative companies to sympathetic clients—all while taking a healthy cut for themselves, of course.

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Excise taxes, or sin taxes are bad ideas for many reasons. We never support them, no matter how "bad" the "sin" legislators seek to tax.

Sin taxes are meant not only to raise money — usually for some usually un-opposable cause — but to influence consumer behavior. They are designed to artificially increase what consumers pay, with the goal of reducing (legal) sales of the disfavored products.

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