Department of pass the law to learn what's in it...

FDA regulators have proposed these graphic warning labels on cigarette packs

Whopping smoker's penalty found in Obamacare's murky depths

Washington – It's called “shaping,” and it's all the rage among behaviorists, statists, and other proponents of the nanny state.

If a social engineer has a goal in mind, the strategy is to increase the pain of certain types of behavior to a point of diminishing returns – a give-up point at which the actor will relinquish long-held beliefs and convictions in favor of an entirely new way of thinking and reacting to daily stimuli.

The result: A massive social shift from drinking to not drinking, drugging to abstinence, or smoking to (cough, cough) “Would you mind not smoking?”

Like Ragú spaghetti sauce, it's in there, buried somewhere deep in the Affordable Health Care and Patient Protection Act of 2010, a smoker's penalty for unreconstructed users of tobacco smoking materials that could cost a 55-year-old smoker $4,250 in penalties over and above his premiums, a 60-year-old $5,100.

True, everyone will be covered, but not everyone will get the best rate – especially if they engage in the risky behavior of smoking tobacco, which health experts estimate causes as many as 450,000 deaths per year from its complications.

There are no extra charges for the overweight patient, the diabetic, or those who suffer from heart arrhythmia.

Those who are covered by employers' programs may join smoking cessation programs to get a break from the crushing expense of providing their own mandatory health insurance, something required by the new law, derisively nicknamed “Obamacare.”

One is reminded of the legacy of Sir Walter Raleigh, the English explorer who brought tobacco from the new colony of Virginia to the Court of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth I.

It is said that on one of his infrequent visits to his ancestral home, an elderly manservant became confused when he saw plumes of smoke curling out of Sir Walter's pipe. He doused the nobleman with a pail of water.

Raleigh left a small tobacco pouch in his cell at Bloody Tower on the day of his beheading by order of King James.

Inscribed upon it: “Comes meus fuit in ilo miserrimo tempore...” - the Latin for “It was my companion at that most miserable time.”

The floggings will continue until morale improves!