The Biden Administration’s instinct is always to shoot business first and clean up the unintended consequences later. Its example this week—there’s an example every week—is to tease regulation to slash nicotine in cigarettes followed by a leak of its plan to ban Juul e-cigarettes.
Nobody disputes that tobacco is harmful, especially for young people. But misconceived regulation can also boomerang. The 1998 state settlement helped the Big Four Tobacco companies grow profits and cement their market share, as our columnist Holman Jenkins has noted. Big business loves big government.
