Coal Regulation Battle Can Draw Lessons from War on Tobacco

In the looming conflict over the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s new carbon regulation, there may be lessons to be learned from an earlier battle against tobacco. “The so-called War on Coal is reminiscent of the War on Tobacco during the 1990s. Then, federal and state officials keyed in on a widely reviled product pulled from the earth in some of the nation’s poorest regions, intent on regulating it to minimize its health effects and societal damage,” Weisman writes. “There is absolutely a way to do it again,” said Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, who helped lead the fight against tobacco as a state attorney general. “In the long run, those regions would be much healthier financially and economically to be less dependent on one product, especially a product of finite quantity in the ground, than to continue to eat, live, and breathe coal.”