A Republican senator who is also a doctor is calling for a new era of Prohibition — outlawing cigarette smoking and other tobacco use.

The unlikely demand comes from Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.), one of the staunchest free-market conservatives in the Senate.

Really? I mean because that war on drugs is working so well, and prohibition worked so well, and there are how many tobacco farmers, and how many people whose jobs are on the line?

No question, I'm a lefty, and this is one of the dumbest damn ideas I've seen in a while. If you want to do something worthwhile with this one, you do exactly what they just did, raise the taxes on the stuff, then put that money into a kitty that pays off the health costs of smoking related illnesses. Forced health insurance, paid for by the money spent on it.

But oh no, that would be socialism, and it's far better to create a whole new group of people to stick in jails (the 40 MILLION smokers), and a whole new class of criminals running smokes to those 40 million smokers, and hey, lets not leave out the fact that cigs become the most profitable enterprise in the country generating a wave of violence making Chicago in the 20's look tame, or the lost tax money coming in, or anything else.

Tom Coburn, you rat bastard commie!