Bad news for you Internet-shopping tobacco monkeys out there: Fed-Ex is clamping down on online tobacco merchants.

From the article: “FedEx Express and FedEx Ground (FedEx) have agreed to undertake changes to their business practices that will strengthen their policies prohibiting the delivery of cigarettes to consumers throughout the United States, New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer announced.

“I commend FedEx for joining in this important effort,” said Spitzer. “This is another example of private industry joining with law enforcement to address important social problems. When private companies like FedEx take the initiative to protect their services from being used by those engaged in criminal conduct, we all win.”

“We all win”. Except, of course, smokers who can’t find their preferred devil’s weed locally, who are labeled as “criminals” for trying to purchase a legal product through the mail. On a personal note, this is a big downer for me as a pipe smoker: Ireland’s tobacco selection is paltry compared to the richness and variety of America’s truly amazing selection of excellent tobaccos, and the only way I have been able to historically get them is to either have my American girlfriends smuggle a few pounds into Ireland as my personal tobacco molls, or to get an online retailer like Tobacco Direct to FedEx me a shipment. No longer, apparently.

Would someone just outlaw smoking already, so we can all finally end the charade that smoking is still legal?

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