Bug-loving bureaucrats.

ITEM: The owner of a small hardware store in Chelsea, Quebec, according to the Ottawa Citizen for August 3rd, "has been fined $12,000 for selling common household products to kill ants, wasps and hornets without a permit" on three occasions in 2001 and 2002. The store owner said the fine and added court costs represented "about three years' worth of net profits for the store."

According to the Ottawa Citizen, officials front the Quebec Ministry of Environment said the fine levied is not part of a "crackdown due to Quebec's tough new Pesticide Code, which came into effect in April. The new code will make the sale of most commonly used household pesticides illegal in Quebec by April 2006."

ITEM: "The withdrawal of 81 pesticide products ... brings the UK into line with an EU-wide directive on pesticide regulation," reported the BBC on July 25th. Manufacturers "have withdrawn the products rather than put them through health and safety trials to comply with the new regulations." Continued the BBC: "Labour Euro-MP David Bowe welcomed the ban, which he said underlined the potential hazards of many of the chemicals in everyday use."

BETWEEN THE LINES: Nowhere in either account is there even a hint that the interventionist bureaucracy isn't all-knowing or that its attacks on liberty might not be justified--scientifically or otherwise. And, yes, it can happen here. It is not just Canadian and European eco-extremists--fueled by propaganda instead of science--whose fanaticism helps drive government policy. Indeed, it could be argued that homegrown ecofreaks caused even more widespread harm by leading the campaign against DDT (one of the most effective pesticides created to date), which was banned in 1972 by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Even now, West Nile virus is on the upswing because the most effective pesticides are forbidden. Events in Canada and the U.K. today may foreshadow what will occur in America tomorrow.

Consider the deaths from malaria, for instance, which had been all but wiped out in many areas. There were 75 million people who contracted malaria in India during the 1940s, with some 800,000 deaths annually. "By 1961, thanks to DDT, the number of cases fell to 50,000." recounts Investor's Business Daily. "In Sri Lanka, DDT use started in 1946. Within 18 years, cases dropped from 3,000,000 to 29, with zero deaths."

Then came the DDT ban in the U.S. and elsewhere. "The remarkable statistics reversed," summarizes IBD. "Now a million, mostly children, die from malaria each year and 300 million are infected. And while some African countries have turned again to DDT to control outbreaks, Western governments continue to press for at global ban."

Of course, not everybody is dismayed: Infection-carrying mosquitoes no doubt are flit and happy.