It’s bad enough that New York’s City Council is keeping Wal-Mart and its everyday low prices out of New York City, hurting low-income New Yorkers who could save money by shopping there. Now get this — in some states, laws against “predatory pricing” are forcing Wal-Mart to stop filling generic drug prescriptions at $4 an order and to instead raise prices to $9 an order.

The magazine Drug Topics reports that a backlash is brewing against these laws across the land. “An effort is under way in Colorado to repeal the state’s predatory-pricing law, or at least to exempt prescription drugs,” the magazine reports. “And in Minnesota, lawmakers recently announced that they plan to introduce a bill that would exempt prescription drugs from the state’s predatory pricing law.”

The magazine recounts that in 1993, the Arkansas Supreme Court sided with Wal-Mart against several Arkansas pharmacies, ruling that Wal-Mart’s low prescription drug prices, even some on which it lost money on each sale, were part of a strategy to attract customers to stores, not to drive the competition out of the market.

We’ve long been skeptical of the laws interfering between sellers and buyers on price. The laws against “predatory pricing ” end up costing consumers rather than protecting them. The Wal-Mart example is particularly vivid, but it simply underscores the basic illogic of laws such as one in Wisconsin that, according to Drug Topics, requires a minimum 6% markup on tobacco, alcohol, and gasoline.

Carving out exemptions to these laws for prescription drugs is a step in the right direction, but a better approach would be to eliminate the laws entirely, including New York’s Motor Fuel Marketing Practices Act, which imposes a $10,000 fine on gas stations that sell fuel at a retail price that is less than 95% of the seller’s cost. In comments objecting to the New York law, the Federal Trade Commission wrote, “Low prices benefit consumers. Consumers are harmed only if, because of low prices, a dominant competitor is able later to raise prices to supracompetitive levels.”

The commission noted, “Economic and legal studies and court decisions indicate that below-cost pricing that leads to monopoly rarely occurs,” and further that, “When there is no danger that a monopoly might later be created, consumers are harmed by public policies that have the effect of increasing low prices that are the product of the competitive process.” It applies to drug prices at Wal-Mart as well as to gasoline prices in New York. The real predators here aren’t the companies but the politicians who, in the name of helping consumers, end up passing laws that lead to higher prices.