Good God, why?
Because I cherish liberty and freedom. And it signals that a class of Karens and Brandons may be on the descent.
You can draw a very bright line from the successful weaponization of anti-tobacco sentiment, and the destruction of rights, specifically those of commercial property owners such as the owners of cafes, restaurants, bars, stores, environmentalism, and the knock-on effects on civil liberties during COVID-1984.
In 1995, California was the first state to enact a statewide smoking ban for restaurants. I worked in NYC when the idea to ban smoking in bars and clubs gained steam, and ultimately passed in 2002. It sparked a citywide debate, with the pro-ban people gaining the upper hand. I mean, how can you defeat leftist-based emotional argument of "I won't die of secondhand smoke and my clothes won't smell"?
And there was much rejoicing. Except...what really happened was a sort-of violation of the Takings clause. What all the anti-smokers et al achieved was the sanctioning of the state to tell commercial property owners what can and can't happen on their property, without compensation.
NY has moved beyond bars, clubs, offices, and public places to outdoors. Other municipalities have enacted similar takings, erm, bans. Nobody fights for commercial property rights anymore. Marx and Engels are laughing in hell.
Second-hand smoke is what economists call an externality - an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party's (or parties') activity. Guess what else is an externality? Air pollution, specifically exhaust from motor vehicles. The same folks who complain about the smell of smoke are likely driving cars with an internal combustion engine. This may be only one example of an externality, but the whole environmental movement rests on "the need for government to regulate industry to make the air clean." You can draw a straight line from the “ban smoking indoors” movement to Greta Thunberg.
The whole concept of negative externalities, which worked so swimmingly in the anti-smoking crusade, got weaponized in Covid. When the shots that were granted EUAs rolled out, many people refused to take them. We then saw the pro-shot talking heads brandish anti-smoking arguments - remember "The bottom line: We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers." Regarding masks, we got Mandatory masking? What smoking bans can teach us
Despite well-documented health consequences of indoor smoking, efforts to ban the behavior were met with intense political resistance and an all-too-familiar civil liberties debate, just as we see today. But science, combined with social and political initiatives that were responsive to public concerns, eventually spurred a large-scale shift in public opinion around smoking bans. From this experience, three lessons can inform how to improve adherence to universal masking -- a life-saving public health measure: 1. Frame masking as a workers' rights issue, 2. Mandates are necessary because they work, and 3. Don't lose sight of the last mile.
Again, I don’t smoke, and I also don’t like smelling like a chimney (or nowadays, like a pot dispensary) after a night at a club or restaurant. But liberty isn’t always clean and antiseptic; second-hand smoke is a cost of freedom.
The anti-smoking campaign that gave the government an inroad into whittling away rights under the guise of public health has continue unabated.
If smoking is making a comeback, that means love of liberty may also be on the ascent. Smoke up, Johnny.
+1
The time for people to get hooked on tobacco for a lifetime of addiction is over, there may be fads and enclaves but its day has passed.
The government will never again have the opportunity of decades of issuing taxpayer-paid free daily cigarettes to 30 million or so of its captive employees for decades.
Under the guise of? It IS a health issue. The health risks of smoking are not made up.
And non-smokers do not want their right to breathe clean air taken from them by inconsiderate smokers.
I find it interesting that libertarians and many smokers demand their right to do whatever they want regardless of the effects it has on others, and then tell off others that if they don't like it they can move, and restrict their rights to accommodate the smokers/libertarians.
It all depends on whose rights are they feel are being violated. If it's theirs, the world is ending. If they are violating others, tough beans for the others. Most libertarians/smokers are all for freedom to do what they want but not for others to do the same.
Libertarians are as a whole seriously lacking in common courtesy at a very basic level.
FWIW, I don't want others peeing in the pool water either.
It seemed to me that the democrats latched on to the anti-tobacco wagon about the time that the South’s political money was shifting to the GOP and of course, there was that massive shift of billions to the trial lawyers in that giant tobacco settlement which gave the top democrat donor group billions to play with.
At what I thought was a time (1980s/1990s?)when GOP and Democrat lines were set in stone on the national tobacco battle, I was shocked to learn that Willie Brown (California, Kamala Harris) was the top recipient of tobacco money.
I remember back when businesses first started banning smoking on their own, and thinking even back then that freedom was taking a big hit. Back then one could smoke even in hospitals, but then the ban came, but most people ignored it or snuck ciggs by going to,the restroom, or stairwells. The hospital personnel knew patients were doing it, and said nothing because they understood that many folks were on their last leg and needed the stress relief.
BUT then Karen’s started popping up everywhere, and slowly but surely folks lost their freedom. The Karen’s rejoiced, but countless people suffered as a result- having to go cold turkey in their ,ast days or months, depending on their conditions etc.
I despise the Karen’s for it. The suffering they caused to those who needed the comfort the most is beyond the pale.
[[Guess what else is an externality? Air pollution, specifically exhaust from motor vehicles. The same folks who complain about the smell of smoke are likely driving cars with an internal combustion engine]]
Yep- good point. And you watch- the electric vehicle only people will use it as an ax to bludgeon society into submission, claiming that people are dying from exhaust, therefore it should be banned.
I don’t smoke anymore either, but I have a theory that the massive increase in anger in society might be linked to forcing people to go without ciggs for extended periods of time. I would sit in a resteraunt with designated areas for smoking, and would sit with my fr83nds who did smoke, and not be bothered by it. If my breathing got too difficult, I would change to non smoking areas-
This makes about as much sense as the pro-gambling, pro-drug legalization crowd. There's a conflation of vice, regulation of vice, and the merits of engaging in vice that denies what this stuff does to your fellow American. I also used to erroneously think that a libertarian paradise full of vice was "freedom", until the reality became undeniable.
The reason so many people were addicted to cigarettes in the first place is Big Government. Tobacco was subsidized for many decades via New Deal programs, including and up to the time that people knew smoking killed.
The cigarette companies knew for decades before they were forced to acknowledge it that nicotine was an extremely addictive drug, and they continued to lie about it into the 1990s. Having a highly addictive drug that was subsidized by taxpayers pushed on young people to create lifelong smokers while the hospitals filled up with emphysema and lung cancer cases and cash was funneled to politicians to keep the con going isn't "freedom" in any sense of the word. The tobacco companies genetically altered the tobacco to be more addictive, then lied about it to Congress. When people tried to blow the whistle, they threatened them and sent Clinton-circle private detectives to dig up dirt on them. It was pure evil.
I can't fathom how you associate corrupt government-backed corporations marketing and selling deadly poison to young people and your fellow Americans with a free society. The only people I see smoking nowadays are hipsters in coffee shops with neck beards, promiscuous women, protesting leftists, and homeless people.
The conservatives I know and follow have maintained or rediscovered their commitment to health by exercise and consuming less corporate poison. I don't desire to see anyone smoking any more than I want to see people shooting up heroin on the street and hookers on every corner while poor people waste their paychecks on lottery tickets. Some may think cigarette butts in the street, used condoms in your yard from ubiquitous legal prostitution, the smell of weed smoke, and slot machines in convenience stores are freedom, but please keep that crap out of my community.
The perpetuation of vice isn't "freedom".
A fat, sick, broke, and debt-ridden populace smoking cigarettes, drinking plastic bottle vodka, and buying weekly or daily lottery tickets is a gift to the authoritarians. You can't fight for freedom when you're busy perpetuating your own addictions, addictions that are themselves pushed on a populace by the Deep State.
It also might help to ask yourself why a pro-Deep State, leftist rag like The Guardian is pushing this. I'll give you hint Jack, so pay attention; it ain't because they value your "freedom".