This is What the Cult of the Omnipotent State Looks Like

From The Hill:

The FDA has the ability to stop e-cigarette sales

Not in a million years will the FDA ever have that ability.

For evidence of my claim, hit Wikipedia and read up on the history of "attempts to stop sales of" cannabis, cocaine, heroin, LSD, methamphetamine, etc.

E-cigarettes are batteries that power a heating element to vaporize common food ingredients (propylene glycol or vegetable glycerine) with nicotine (which can be extracted from a number of plants in the nightshade family, or synthesized in a lab).

I'm not saying we won't see a war on batteries, food additives, and common plants. I'm just pointing out that in any such war the batteries, food additives, and common plants (or, rather the people who want and use them) will win hands down.

But what struck me vis a vis the quoted statement was arguments I've had over the years with people who claim there is no "Cult of the Omnipotent State."

What would you call someone who just assumes, in the face of millennia of evidence that runs without exception to the contrary, that the state has the magical power to make batteries, food additives, and common plants disappear from the market?

I'd call that person a cultist in the grip of a bizarre superstition that the state can do anything its priests decide should be done.