The Washington Free Beacon is reporting today that the government will be using subliminal messages to discourage teenagers from smoking.

The article reports:

The National Institutes of Health is spending nearly $400,000 testing how to insert subliminal messages against cigarette smoking in video games played by teens.

The University of Connecticut received a grant for the study earlier this year that suggest teenagers are easier targets for anti-cigarette messaging when they are lost in video games.

“With surveys indicating that 97 [percent] of adolescents and 80 [percent] of young adults play videogames for entertainment, use of entertainment videogames as a tool for delivering graphic warnings has tremendous potential to influence youth cigarette and e-cig rates,” according to the grant for the study. “However, before such an approach can be pursued, researchers need to better understand health communication dynamics in computer-mediated, virtual gaming worlds.”

First if all, I don’t have a problem telling teenagers not to smoke. I do have a problem with subliminal messages sponsored by the government. Also, why are we going after smoking at the same time many states are legalizing marijuana. If marijuana is legal, does anyone really believe that teenagers will not find a way to get a hold of it and smoke it? I think there is a contradiction here.

Also, according to AgMag:

Arizona Sen. John McCain ignited an historic debate over crop insurance yesterday when he offered an amendment to the farm bill that would end insurance subsidies to tobacco farmers.

The amendment offered by McCain and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) would actually end tobacco subsidies.

Like most of us, McCain thought the U.S. stopped subsidizing tobacco after the famed “tobacco” buy-out in 2004. Fact is, between 1995 and 2011, taxpayers gave tobacco farmers another $276 million in crop insurance subsidies – on top of $1.3 billion in other farm subsidies.

As McCain said, “it turns out Joe Camel’s nose has been under the tent all this time in the form of hidden crop insurance subsidies.”

It also turns outs that tobacco subsidies are a smoking gun. Where there’s smoke, there’s fire.

Until now, crop insurance subsidies have largely remained hidden from public view – even though taxpayers pay two-thirds of the cost of premium subsidies and most of the claims when disaster strikes.

But, as the cost of the program has exploded – from $2 billion in 2001 to $9 billion in 2011 – more legislators have begun to wonder why farmer businesses and crop insurance companies enjoying record profits can’t share more of the cost of their risk management.

For example, Sens. Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.) and Pat Toomey (R-Penn.) wonder why the $50,000 payment limit that applies to other farm subsidies doesn’t apply to crop insurance premiums. Under current law, some farm businesses should annually receive more than $1 million in premium support, and more than 10,000 policyholders should receive more than $100,000 in insurance subsidies.

One of the problems that Washington consistently has is that once federal money is given to Americans, politicians will lose votes if it is taken away. Since the goal of every politician in Washington is to be re-elected, few of them have the courage to take away something voters see as a benefit.  That is the root of the current problem in repealing ObamaCare.

In 2013 The Hill reported the following about the suggested amendment to the farm bill:

Their amendment would have prohibited the payment by the federal crop insurance program of any portion of the premium for a policy or plan of insurance for tobacco. Feinstein said tobacco farmers could still buy crop insurance, but it wouldn’t be federally subsidized. She added that the effects of tobacco already cost taxpayers billions of dollars in Medicare and Medicaid expenses.

The amendment was rejected.

So let’s get this straight–the government is spending nearly $400,000 testing the idea of inserting subliminal messages into video games to discourage teenagers from smoking while at the same time providing insurance and subsidies to farmers who grow tobacco. What, pray tell, are the farmers supposed to do with their insured and subsidized crop? Why not simply pay the farmers a small amount of money to grow a different crop? At that point, the cost of smoking would be so prohibitive that teenagers would not have the money to smoke. Wouldn’t that be better than using mind control on a supposedly free people?