One of the highlights of recent weeks was the delightful confession by the Centers for Disease Control that their claim that 400,000 deaths a year due to obesity was, well, wrong.
Apparently, there was an “inadvertent calculation error”.
However, even better still, as Reason’sJacob Sullum has noted, this mistake, and the boost it gave to the anti-obesity crusade, has caused outrage amongst the anti-cigarette jihadists. Their complaint? They want nothing, nothing, to displace tobacco’s role as this nation’s number one scourge, a wheezing, coughing fifth nag of the Apocalypse that can be used to justify raising taxes, fighting ‘passive smoking’ and so on.
Sullums comment? “Some might be dismayed at such squabbling among lifestyle dictators, but it’s music to my ears.”
Oh, indeed.