Posted on 11/07/2002 2:04:46 PM PST by prman
Two decades ago, before it became fashionable to detest tobacco products, anti-smoking zealots used to argue that their interest in banning smoking only extended to prohibiting the practice on plane flights. This was only reasonable, they argued, because aircraft ventilation systems had no way to filter smoke-tainted air, and non-smokers had no recourse if they didn't want to inhale it.
This proposed restriction was presented to the public as the outer limits on curtailing people's freedom to enjoy smoking. But with the stealth that guile brings, the long march to stamp out smoking everywhere was under way. Buoyed by the relentless drumbeat of sympathetic media propaganda and vested interests in the health care industry, the wheels of disapprobation ground inexorably finer by a thorough demonizing of tobacco producers and users.
The overt demonology became political correctness, leading corporate executives, facility managers and assorted government functionaries to curtail smoking in the workplace. Everyone has seen the sorry spectacle of huddled groups of beleaguered smokers, furtively sneaking puffs outside their workplaces in the cold and damp.
Demagogues like California Congressman Henry Waxman and Savonarola-like activist John Banzhaf have called for Draconian tobacco regulation far and wide, encouraging tort lawyers across the country to belly up to the bar and file whatever personal injury or class action lawsuit will allow them to pick the pockets of tobacco companies.
Not to be outdone, state and local politicians in league with anti-smoking groups push ballot measures in numerous states and municipalities that either increase already onerous tobacco taxes or outlaw smoking in various public areas and workplaces.
Following similar measures in California and Delaware, Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, is now pressuring New York's City Council to ban smoking outright in bars and restaurants in all five boroughs. Since 1995, smoking has been prohibited in city office buildings and in restaurants seating more than 35 customers. The new proposed restriction would affect an additional 13,000 establishments.
This heavy-handed coercion is all done under the banner of health care advocacy, which, in the minds of political animals, always seems to trump the rights of individuals to pursue their own pleasures, unless the lawmakers' own pockets are at stake. The recent defeat of Michigan's Proposal 4 ballot initiative, which would have redistributed tobacco settlement monies to private health care organizations, was heartily cheered by state politicos, since they were being used to fund other projects.
This long-running anti-smoking jihad is not unlike the Zeitgeist demonizing the liquor industry that brought about Prohibition in 1920. In the similar attempt to solve all sorts of social problems, proponents argued that by reducing the consumption of alcohol, crime would decrease, health and hygiene would improve and the tax burden of building prisons would be lifted.
As time would show, the Noble Experiment was a miserable failure. In the long run, alcohol consumption actually increased, organized crime and corruption got a foothold, an underground economy was born and the touted health benefits were not realized.
There is no question that heavy long-term smoking represents a health hazard to the smoker, as does habitual alcohol consumption for the heavy drinker. And while some argue that "second-hand smoke" might jeopardize the health of people in close proximity to smokers, over-consumption of alcohol certainly modifies the public and private behavior of drinkers, often to the detriment or peril of those around them.
The question remains: Should government regulate smoking as it tried to do with alcoholic beverage production and consumption? Have smokers no rights? Should a man who risks his investment in a bar or restaurant be put at an economic disadvantage because he is proscribed from allowing smoking in his place of business? Hasn't he the right to establish his own rules and policies to attract the customers he wants? After all, those who are offended by tobacco smoke also have the right not to patronize his restaurant.
The anti-tobacco and anti-alcohol crusades are cut from the same cloth. Today, anti-smoking forces are mercilessly metastasizing to kill off the last redoubts that remain for those who might enjoy a postprandial cigarette, cigar or pipe.
This is not only wrong; it is, as Prohibition showed, against nature. People must be free to choose – even if it means their own poison. The more intense the regulation, the more potent tobacco becomes as people find other sources to pursue their pleasure.
The spreading cancer of the anti-smoking Puritans should be of concern to free men everywhere. As economist Ludwig von Mises cautioned, "Once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government to protect the individual against his own foolishness, no serious objections can be advanced against further encroachments."
Barrett Kalellis is a columnist and writer whose articles appear regularly in various local and national print and online publications.
This guy has lost it. Is he implying that government failed to regulate alcoholic beverage production and consumption? Last I saw one needed a license to produce, distribute and sell alcoholic beverages. Government also has put an age limit on consumption and, of course, a hefty tax!
And then it was realized how much nicer a smoke-free world was. Not to mention the employees health and less maintenance for the airlines (lower cost).
No person has the right to barge onto another person's property uninvited. Nor does a person have the right to "camp" or take up a seat on another person's property once the property owner has asked the person -- whom the property owner invited in the first place -- to leave. Who is to say when a person is uninvited? The property owner. Who is to say when an invited guest has overstayed their welcome? The property owner.
That law, if you will, is universal. It's objective law. Objective laws exist beyond the reach of man-made law or political-agenda law or media agenda or media bias. That is, objective law regarding access to property and who holds the right is valid on all property at the property owner's discretion.
The American news media proclaims from on high that the individual belonging to this group of people and that group of people and all manner or segments of individuals that can be corralled into a group have, as an individual member of said group, the right to barge in uninvited, and when invited, the right to overstay his or her welcome.
That communitarian agenda is proclaimed form on high to protect the "little guy". The little guy being an individual of any special interest group. Special interest groups that self-proclaim to have rights that as separate individuals no person in the group has the right to impose on another individual.
It's the rule of tribalism -- tyranny of a majority over the individual. It's a form of terrorism inflicted on the individual that if the individual doesn't bow to the tribe's irrationality, dishonesty and mysticism he or she will become the tribe's next victim. There in lies the underlying motive and cause of almost all politicians, bureaucrats, mainstream news media "personalities" and many academics: to undermine honesty.
Dishonesty, mysticism and irrationality are the problem/cancer that terrorizes the little guy.
And I believe that these things are also in place with the tobacco industry, including a heftier tax BEFORE all the tax increases on tobacco went in.
What's your point in regards to the article?
For whom?
Yes. And he's right. Just ask any teenager.
The heavy regulation that exists for tobacco has failed too. States that have hefty taxes on tobacco have succeeded in creating black markets and rich smugglers. Al Qaeda is even making money by smuggling cigarettes.
Yep, govt has failed. As usual.
A purely subjective position which you are free to state but have no right to impose.
Kind of like Brady Bunch cheerleader Sarah Brady, when she says she only wants "common sense gun laws". Like the anti-smoking Nazis, the gun haters will relentlessly pursue total confiscation of all guns as their primary objective. Count on it.
I think you are arguing an abstract, as libertarians/objectivist like to do, to uncover some divine rule.
I argue in favor of protecting individual life-and-property rights. If it's not group "rights", what you're arguing is lost on me.
Not always. Perhaps the most ironic example of this is Neal Boortz, usually identified as a conservative, libertarian-leaning radio talk show host. I say ironic because he's generally clear-headed on most other issues.
His attitude toward smoking and smokers is nothing short of vitriolic. For a recent example, read his World Net Daily column of November 5 (it's in their archive.)
Boortz literally ratchets up the demonization of those who choose to smoke to borderline hate speech. I know, that's a more or less liberal concept, and he's no liberal.
Except on the issue of smoking, where he's all Don Quixote with none of the charm.
He seems to believe that anyone who smokes MUST be awash in self-hatred. Now, if 25 percent of American adults are in that predicament, wouldn't that be an unrecoverable blow to society, not to mention the economy? More to the point, shouldn't the damage have been far worse 35 years ago when, even after the Surgeon General's report, the number of smokers still approached 50 percent?
It's patently, and somewhat pathetically obvious, that health advocacy is the last thing on Boortz's mind. He doesn't ascribe virtual sub-human status to alcoholics or the morbidly obese. For whatever reason, smoking is his personal devil.
I think this is the reason: he wants to feel better about himself by declaring low-level Jihad on a group that few will rise to defend.
It makes me wonder who is really suffering from self-hatred.
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