Govt.: Spy on em if they got em

Has it come to this? The government spying on smokers like the KGB snooping on dissidents?

KnoxNews.com reports:

Starting today, state Department of Revenue agents will begin stopping Tennessee motorists spotted buying large quantities of cigarettes in border states, then charging them with a crime and, in some cases, seizing their cars. Critics say the new “cigarette surveillance program” amounts to the use of “police state” tactics and wrongfully interferes with interstate commerce.

This also is dumb. Let’s say you want to bring back a van’s worth of smokes from Kentucky. You don’t just go there and buy the smokes, then drive back to the Volunteer State. No. Instead, you get your buddy in Owensboro to buy the smokes and put them in his garage. Then you drive across Tennessee’s Checkpoint Charlie, make sure nobody is looking, drive to his garage, throw back a few beers while you load up the smokes into your van, give your buddy a few cartons for storage — then drive back to Tennessesee.

The Soviet Union, despite the KGB and the Gulag, had a massive black market. You just can’t shut down capitalism, especially for a harmless diversion like cigarettes.

The smoke smuggling will just get worse once President Hillary passes a new tax on tobacco to pay for more socialized medicine for — and government control over — kids.

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