Why down with the first (I allude to the menthol cigarette ban) and up with the second?  Why the differential treatment and the misplaced moral enthusiasm? The locoweed I smoked with band members in the late '60s was tame stuff, poor in tetrahydrocannabinol as compared to the potent THC-rich product on the market today.  Since then, cigarettes have been wussified what with the addition of filters and lower nicotine levels.   

So why the differential treatment? The short answer is that it is not in the interest of a police state to promote alertness and attention, which is what nicotine does, while it is in such a state's interest to promote dopiness and lethargy and escapism and every manner of vice.  

It is the tried-and-true panem et circenses principle. Keep the masses fat and stupid, doped up on hooch and weed, distracted by mass sporting events such as the Stupor Bowl and pornography, expectant of regular initiative-inimical handouts and 'freebies,' and they will be easy to control. 

Sate the peoples' blood-lust with HollyWeird brutality and gun violence while at the same time stripping law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights.   Alec Baldwin easily serves as poster-clown for this sort of thing: he make big bucks in movies that celebrate violence while knowing nothing himself about firearms and their safe handling. The nimrod is on record as opposing the National Rifle Association, an outfit that promotes gun safety and defends constitutionally-protected (not constitutionally-conferred) natural rights.  Baldwin is a contemptible fool whose willful self-enstupidation resulted in a young woman's death. He has been brought up on charges of involuntary manslaughter, which sounds just right to me. (It's a stronger charge than negligent homicide.) 

We saw the same panem-et-circenses pattern with the COVID-19 lockdown. The churches were targeted for closure while the liquor stores stayed open. Police states brook no critique or competition from organized religion, but a liquored-up citizenry is kept distracted and manipulable.

Similarly with Biden's wide-open border policy. It is not just to flood the nation with 'undocumented Democrats' so as to insure in perpetuity the hegemony of what is now a hard-Left party, but also to allow in as much fentanyl as possible to poison and kill off the native population, and in particular the poor white trash of Appalachia and elsewhere in fly-over country, the people Hillary spoke of as deplorables and Obama as clingers to guns and Bibles.

A government worth having promotes virtue in the people and in particular the virtues of self-reliance and self-control. A totalitarian state, however, works best by promoting vice. A reader sent me to this perceptive article portions of which I will now share:

Remember that the “government,” as I describe it, is much more than just the state. It includes schools, banks, and corporations, collaborating with the state to govern a population. This need not be a conspiracy — although it often is — it can simply occur because of a shared set of objectives and priorities. For the government to cooperate correctly with itself, it needs maximal data and predictability in the population.

That’s why modern governments exert an inverted form of pastoral power to promote vice. Greed, lust, and vainglory are very predictable: if you know that every merchant will do anything to maximize profit, then you can predict their trading patterns with precision. The “rational actor,” the utilitarian automaton, and the pleasure-maximizer are the ideal constituents of the modern population. This means we can expand Dr. E. Michael Jones’ well-known dictum that “sexual liberation is political control”⁴ by saying: manipulation of any vice is political control.

This is why the government is promoting Impossible burgers, even though the company loses money: they want to centralize all protein production. Impossible is a tool to nudge the population’s behavior through a desire for “meatiness” in food. The government seeks to steer the rudder of our vices until all protein comes from patented software and gene edits. They won’t even have to pass a law.

To summarize and expand upon three of the main points made in the above quotation:

1) The government is not just the State but the latter together with all its adjuncts and extensions including Big Tech and Big Pharma. But 'adjunct' might not be the best word given the regulatory capture of the former by the latter.

2) If the interests of different groups align and they move in the same direction, this need not be due to any  conspiracy among the groups. It follows that anyone who alleges a commonality of direction, towards increasing wokeness, say, is not automatically a conspiracy theorist.

3) ". . . modern governments exert an inverted form of pastoral power to promote vice." A genuine insight beautifully expressed.  I hope you won't take it amiss if I nominate that good Catholic, Joe Biden, for the annual Pastor of Vice award.

You may recall that in 2016, Joey B. received the University of  Notre Dame's Laetare Medal. Read this for a good laugh:

“We live in a toxic political environment where poisonous invective and partisan gamesmanship pass for political leadership,” said Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president. “Public confidence in government is at historic lows, and cynicism is high. It is a good time to remind ourselves what lives dedicated to genuine public service in politics look like. We find it in the lives of Vice President Biden and Speaker Boehner.

Might we call this the 'regulatory capture' of a once-great university by the WokeState and its puppets and pimps? (Or is that going too far?)  The (so-called) Catholic universities are the most corrupt of all, for they have fallen the farthest. They are in dire need of defunding by sane and reasonable alumni. Not a dime for those who support DEI.

The churches, the RCC in particular, the universities, the once-great ones especially, and the Fourth Estate should serve as checks on the State and its omnivorous appetite for power and control.  They should function as bulwarks against and critics of the government and its metastasizing octopus of grasping and sucking agencies and agents.