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Comment by notadoc | Hacker News Reader

Why not let the free market decide how much nicotine to put into products?

And how much lead is OK in drinking water?

That's is a very disingenuous response. I know most people have been conditioned to hate smokers over the last 20 years, but don't by obtuse about it.

The water utility is anything but a free market. It's not a very good analogy.

Given how addictive nicotine is does the free market even work? Isn't the pressure the addicts feel to get more nicotine a HUGE external force on the market that may distort it until it doesn't work?

After all cigarettes didn't become healthier once the dangers were know (long ago). The government had to step in.

To say nothing of tobacco companies acting like a cartel.

The most deadly addictive substance on Earth is sugar, it kills far more than nicotine could ever hope to. But for some reason the FDA doesn't care to restrict everyone's sugar intake. As far as I'm concerned all we needed was appropriate tort reform which would allow people who get cancer to sue tobacco companies for damages (before the warnings).

Nicotine is not super highly addictive, as far as drugs go.

Tobacco smoke is. It has MAOIs (addictive) and possibly other drugs.

It isn't a free market for a reason.

Nictotine isn't so bad, actually.[1] You seem like a science denier. Next thing we know you'll be telling us the earth won't burn to a crisp from the poisonous gas known as CO2.

[1] https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/is-nicotine-all-b...

Come on, Nicotine and CO2 aren't even remotely close to the same sort of thing. It's quite true that nicotine is only responsible for a small part of the (direct) harm of cigarettes, but nicotine has a lot of bad effects that the linked article doesn't mention. A big one for young women are the adverse effects on fetal development. Because of addictivness of the drug, many pregnant mothers are unable to stop nicotine consumption during their pregancy.

It's quite likely that there are useful applications of nicotine (even botox has uses!), but that doesn't mean the drug is safe for general use.

I think they did already. And people died...

That is basically what happened until now. And it had very catastrophic result.

Nicotine-related products kill far more people on a yearly basis than guns.

That's saying that steel is responsible for car crashes. Nicotine isn't harmless but switching to pipes, gum, or patches is a hell of an improvement. Nicotine on its own is in the same league as caffeine.

And much much more then some schedule 1 drugs. But hey, alcohol and ciggarets are cool, but LSD or some plants for which there is no known overdose can get you a lifetime in prison

But not nearly as many as sugar related products.

There is no such thing as a free market. It's a myth.

In the absence of government regulation, companies would withhold as much information as possible from consumers, preventing those consumers from making informed decisions about which products and services to consume. There would be overwhelming information asymmetry, which would lead to sub-optimal choices. Such a market would not be free, because companies would have immense power over consumers and would undoubtedly abuse it in order to maximize profits.

Capitalism leads to the most efficient allocation of resources, but government regulation needs to exist in order to ensure the profit motive does not outweigh the need to treat consumers fairly.

Ah, but the government has intervened for more than 30 years to make sure everyone knows the dangers of tobacco use.

>...preventing those consumers from making informed decisions about which products and services to consume.

Doesn't this provide an opportunity for another business such as Consumer Reports?

Consumer Reports would be useful in a limited capacity, but they could only report on products and services after the fact. They would have no access to important pieces of information such as the conditions under which the products are being produced.

The meat industry is a great example of this. Battles are being fought currently between companies and the people who record their operations on video. The former obviously doesn't want consumers to find out the horrendous ways in which they treat animals. The latter have to rely on the legal system (i.e. the government) to ensure that information is available to consumers so that they can make informed decisions.

Yes, but enlightened capitalism realizes that killing your customers is only good in the short run. In the long run it is much better if they remain living.

Maybe, but the problem with that is that by the time capitalism has realized that, many people have died.

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