Funny how the GOP is all – “EEEK! What if a kid tasted pipe tobacco!?!” and not “Holy shit, our air is POISON”, or “Dear God, they’re processing RADIOACTIVE TRASH from other STATES and COUNTRIES just a few miles from the capital city!”

Every year … every year these legislative Republicans manage to lick the power outlets in a way …. just not deep enough.

From KSL (Who doesn’t sue bloggers yet)

Rep. Paul Ray, R-Clearfield, said his bill, HB170, is an attempt to stop the sale of flavored tobacco products, which are similarly packaged like candy and gum. […] We … have the nicotine candy, which if a toddler gets a hold of, three or four pieces could actually cause death to the child through the toxicity of the nicotine.” -Rep. Paul Ray

Ok – #1 – I’ve never met a kid that wouldn’t spit chew out … it tastes disgusting. Even people who chew say so.

and #2 – it’ll go after pipe tobacco and – in typical GOP fashion – help wipe out yet another actual small business.

Fred Cvar, owner of The Tinder Box, says pipe tobacco is not marketed toward children.

“It’s not the sort of thing that would be ingested by anybody, let alone some kid,” Cvar said. “I don’t think that they would want to chew on it. If they did, it would be spit out immediately and perhaps it would have a wonderful effect on the kid to where he would never again want to ingest tobacco.”

Ray explained that his bill is directed at products that blur the line between candy and tobacco, and pipe tobacco isn’t among them. But he added that flavored tobacco is flavored tobacco.

Best guess? Ray couldn’t figure out a way to get another tobacco tax to pass this year, and Buttars and Christiansen have the whole gay hate thing taken care of – might as well write a piece of crap, ignorant and uninformed turd of a bill so that he can go to church and talk about punishing the other kind of folk.