Tucker Carlson’s Latest Thing Is Sounding Like A Lobbyist For Big Tobacco On His Show: ‘Nicotine Frees Your Mind!’

For nearly a year, the FDA has flirted with banning menthol cigarettes. Those efforts have amped up recently, with New York City considering a ban, too. Few have been as angry at this as insurrection defender and incompetent elections soothsayer Tucker Carlson, who’s dedicated multiple segments to getting weirdly angry about the subject, despite cigarettes having nowhere near the public pull they once did (unless you’re Post Malone). As is Tucker’s wont, he went a little farther into the breach than usual on Friday night, even claiming that highly addictive cigarettes, which are incredibly hard to quit, somehow “free the mind.”

“Why do they hate tobacco? It’s not because it causes cancer,” Tucker railed. “They don’t care about your health. They closed the gyms during COVID. Anyone who closed a gym during a pandemic that kills people who are fat clearly doesn’t care about your health at all.”

That’s some truly tinfoil hat logic, given how easily COVID could spread at a gym, but that wasn’t even the kookiest part. This was: “They hate nicotine. They love THC. They’re promoting weed to your children but they’re not letting you use tobacco or even non-nicotine-delivery devices, which don’t cause cancer. Why do they hate nicotine? Because nicotine frees your mind and THC makes you compliant and passive, that’s why.”

As anyone who’s had to quit smoking tobacco knows, tobacco certainly does the opposite of freeing your mind. It causes both physical and psychological distress. Over the last couple decades, tobacco has grown increasingly unpopular, which surely doesn’t sit well with tobacco companies. Indeed, the world hasn’t heard pro-tobacco nonsense like the kind Tucker has been spouting since the ‘80s.

Tucker’s pro-tobacco ranting certainly turned heads.

It’s yet another example, like demonizing COVID vaccines, of Republicans passionately telling their base to do things that kill them.