The cigarette companies are raising the sticky issue of free speech in arguing that the new federal tobacco law (which lets the FDA more tightly regulate cigarette ads) is unconstitutional. Congress could have avoided that whole mess if it had had the guts to simply outlaw cigarettes as a safety hazard. If I'd had to buy black-market cigarettes on sleazy street corners for $100 a pack when I smoked, I would have quit on the spot.

On one piece of health reform, at least, the politicians seem to have hit a good compromise: generic biologic drugs. As my book "Inside the FDA" explains, it's tough to concoct safe copies of biologic drugs like vaccines, which are made from actual natural materials like cells, rather than by manipulating chemical structures to make, say, Lipitor. Yet a patient could save thousands of dollars:a year on generic copies, as we do with Lipitor's generic rival, simvastatin. So Congress has figured out a compromise where generic biologic drugs would more extra FDA testing than chemicals. Sounds good..