First, does society have any business restricting tobacco products purely on grounds of addiction? Does that make sense, even when the products are dissolvable pellets increasingly purged of carcinogens? And if addiction per se is evil, what about caffeine?

Second, should we even want to purge the nicotine from tobacco? …the less nicotine you put in a smokeless product, the less likely it is to "satisfy" nicotine addicts and lure them away from cigarettes. We permit and even encourage the use of nicotine gum and lozenges to wean people from smoking. What exactly is the moral difference between a lozenge and a pellet?

Addiction is a nasty business, deliberately enslaving people while pretending that they "choose" the product. But if you're going to target that practice, then you'd better come and take all the coffee and Diet Coke from Slate's Washington office. We have some "younger" folks here.