No Smoking in NYC, sez Sullivan (50%BARF)

www.andrewsullivan.com ^ | Sep 8,2002 | Andrew Sullivan

[Lizard_King]

The Puritans They make me wanna smoke

New York City's Joseph Cherner is on a roll. The longtime head of SmokeFree Educational Services, he has just achieved perhaps the apex of his career. It looks highly likely that, because of Mayor Bloomberg's enthusiastic support, almost all public smoking of tobacco will soon be banned in New York City. That means bars, dance-clubs, separately ventilated areas in restaurants, and even outdoor street cafes. This new initiative, backed up by another whopping increase in the cigarette tax, will once and for all condemn smoking to those kinds of illicit and shameful activities that one can only engage in in private. And Mr Cherner is ecstatic.

The New York Times' reporter Andrew Jacobs recently reported Mr Cherner's words of triumph: "All truth goes through three stages," Cherner proclaimed. "It's ridiculed, then violently opposed and then accepted as self-evident." The truth in question? Ah, there's the rub. That cigarette smoking is unhealthy? Hardly. Everyone has known that for years. That second-hand cigarette smoke is a nuisance? Again, no one doubts that either, although the specific harm done by second-hand smoke is still a highly contentious subject. That nicotine is addictive? Er, no one questions that assertion either. No, the truth that Mr Cherner is really pursuing is an old and simple one: smoking is morally wrong (it harms yourself and others) and the government has a duty to try and stamp it out.

American puritanism - never absent but cyclically waxing and waning - is back again. It's one of those features of American culture that has flourished from the very beginning, when the continent was re-booted by a bunch of unpleasant, uptight, do-gooders from England. Why, just this week, within sight of the place where the Pilgrims first landed, on the Eastern most tip of Cape Cod, a park ranger was wading through marsh and walking through half a mile of sand-dunes to present tickets to a handful of distant sun-bathers who had just taken their bathing suits off. Somehow, I think those seventeenth-century anabaptists would have approved.

The ban on smoking, of course, is dressed up in the mantle of public health. This is asserted with a straight face, as if smoking is not a choice, as if its consequences are unknown, as if grown-ups cannot make decisions about their own lives for themselves. Milder, more sensible measures - like allowing some bars to go smoke-free and others to stay nicotined, so that the drinking public can have an actual choice - have been swept aside by the zeal of the anti-smokers. It's not enough merely to segregate smokers any more. They have to be extirpated from the public domain. It figures, I suppose. This is a country that still locks away hundreds of thousands for cannabis-related offenses. It's a country that has recently tried, in some localities, to designate clubbers' glow-sticks as drug paraphernalia in order to shut down rave parties. It's a country where even the journalists barely touch the bottle. And certainly never in working hours.

It seems, alas, as if sometimes the chaotic freedom of America can only be maintained by incessant bouts of panic and puritanism. McDonalds, we learned last week, is now cutting down on the fat in its fries. Not that you can easily switch to fat-and-guilt-free pasta any more either. Having spent decades telling Americans not to eat fat, the dietary puritans are now arguing that carbohydrates are the real evil. American women, beset by all this, were further side-swiped earlier this summer by yet another media campaign against post-menopausal hormone replacement therapy. It turned out that a minuscule increased risks of some sorts of cancer had been detected. The idea that millions of women might feel better, sexier, and happier for many years of their post-menopausal life doesn't count against the scolds telling them the therapy might, conceivably, one day, eventually make them sick. And just for good measure, the doctors subsequently weighed in against wilting men using testosterone replacement therapy as well. Tut tut, guys. You're not supposed to be feeling that good.

Mr Cherner is therefore a classic American type. He has no personal issue with smoking. But he got extremely rich in the bond markets and decided to use his money to advance a cause. According to the Times, "except for a housekeeper who died of lung cancer, [Cherner] never had a firsthand brush with the uglier side of smoking. In fact, the cause was chosen somewhat at random, he said. A childhood comic book habit left him with a superhero's mind-set about good versus evil. "To me it was the classic comic book fight," he said. "One side had all the morality and the other had all the money."" Well, actually, he had all the money, and some poor schmuck trying to smoke a cigarette in his favorite Bronx bar is on the receiving end of Mr Cherner's morality. To give you an idea of what has already been done to the average nicotine addict, the city tax on a packet of cigarettes just went from 8 cents a pack to $1.50 in a single day.

You'd think that some liberal New Yorkers might come to the defense of the down-trodden smoker, especially since he or she is often poorer than the non-smoker, has fewer opportunities for quick and easy pleasure, and already has to pay a hugely regressive tax just to light up. But no. Even the usually big-hearted editorialist for the New Yorker, Rick Hertzberg, weighed in on the Puritan side of the debate last week. "Maybe the real reason smokers don't do more to resist the indignities society heaps upon them - the taxes, the sidewalk banishments, the reproaches - is that they're secretly grateful," opined the New Yorker. "As anyone who has ever been or known one can attest, a smoker is simply a person who would like to quit smoking. In their cups, even the hardest of the hard core - Fleet Street hacks, French academics, truck-stop waitresses, plainclothes cops - will admit that they'd just as soon be free of their addiction." So not only do New Yorkers have to pay far far more, not only can they not even light up in a bar or a sidewalk cafe, they're supposed to be grateful for this latest piece of oppression! I know of one authentic New York response to this attitude but it cannot, alas, be printed in a family newspaper.

[Lizard_King]

Ok, so this isn't exactly hot off the presses, but I think it bears mentioning. Nothing like a liberal trying to criminalize yet another vice, and then having a "moderate" like Sullivan tag it with the catchy "Puritanism". I mean, the Puritans weren't exactly a fun-loving bunch, but to blame them for the modern liberal is quite a stretch...

I guess I shouldn't care so much about his motivations but rather focus on the fact that he is on the correct side, ultimately, hence the 50% Barf.

[jdontom]

Someone needs to ))))PING((((( SheLion on this.

Nothing mentioned about the vendors going out of business because of this crazy Political Correctiness business...

[SheLion]

Oh wow! I sure will have something to say about THIS!!!!

Thanks so much for the ping. I will read this and add my 2 cents. heh!

[YoungKentuckyConservative]

Can anyone tell me why the liberals are so pressed to ban smoking? What benefit does this do to their agenda? I just can't figure out "why" they would go after cigarette companies when:

1. It weakens the tax base (less smokers).

2. They want to legalize marijuna (to make us mo' stupid).

3. They don't appear interested in alcohol.

Help me figure out the "conspiracy" behind this one.

[Cicero]

Well, there are two reasons for calling these liberal fanatics "puritans." First, it's one of the accepted meanings of the word, by extension (whether fair or unfair) from the seventeenth-century Puritans to anyone who tries to spoil people's fun and legislate their behavior.

Second, and perhaps more to the point, he calls them puritans because he knows it will really annoy them. What could be more upsetting to your average liberal agnostic or atheist, who probably thinks that Jerry Falwell is the most dangerous person on the planet, than to be called a puritan?

It's a good way to spoil a liberal's day.

[chudogg]

Can anyone tell me why the liberals are so pressed to ban smoking?

They want to destroy our freedoms one step at a time. They are just starting with the easiest one and will work their way up from there.

[SheLion]

Can anyone tell me why the liberals are so pressed to ban smoking? What benefit does this do to their agenda? I just can't figure out "why" they would go after cigarette companies when:

It's not only the Liberals.  We have RINO'S in office that are working against us as well.

It all comes down to MONEY!  The Tobacco Settlement that was worked out between the Attorney Generals and the Tobacco Company is paying millions into each state.  However, what a lot of people do not realize is that the smokers who pay cigarette taxes are paying into the Tobacco Settlement money 100%!  Not Big T and NOT the government.  It's coming from the people who pay cigarette taxes!

Big T sold out the smokers.  Then, when the Governor's had this windfall of "blood money" filling their coffers, they started using this money for everything but what it was intended for.  For instance:  health care for any sick smoker on welfare, should there BE any.

Now, I am sure you read headlines where the states can't balance their BUDGETS without further taxing cigarettes!  MORE hardships on the smokers!  Then along came the ANTI's, working with the states Human Services. The anti's are reaping big bucks FROM the Tobacco Settlement (keep in mind that the smokers are paying for), to further control smoking, BAN smoking and keep raising taxes.  The longer these groups are in business, the harder it will get for the smokers.

Also, the American Medical Association is working with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.  Currently, there are 46 states in the pocket of the RWJ Foundation.  The higher the taxes on cigarettes, the more control and bans a state imposes on their smokers, the bigger the grants or Blood Money I like call it, will be paid to the state.

It's all about money.  Aside from the bans and the control, the Governors have shot a gift horse in the mouth with taxes.  Smokers have gone elsewhere to buy cheaper cigarettes, leaving the states scratching their heads and upset because they aren't realizing all that MONEY they thought we would still pay.  The MSA turned the states into GLUTTONS.

If you need links, I can provide them for you.

[Great Dane]

smoking is morally wrong (it harms yourself and others)

So does AIDS.......... sorry to be so catty, but thats me these days.

[Great Dane]

2. They want to legalize marijuna (to make us mo' stupid).

This one is easy, if you smoke pot and get more stupid, you will be easier to control when everything else comes down the pike, such as a $15 hamburger..... it IS all about money you know.

[SheLion]

smoking is morally wrong (it harms yourself and others)

Smoking to "some" might be morally wrong, but Joe Cherner's alternate lifestyle is "also morally wrong," to most people!

Joe Cherner Family Album

And HE has the nerve to call SMOKING immoral. Oh sure!

[Gabz]

And there is absolutely nothing "pure"itan about Joe Cherner.

Mr. Cherner has another, more personal, crusade - homosexual adoptions.

[NYCVirago]

Can anyone tell me why the liberals are so pressed to ban smoking? What benefit does this do to their agenda?

Good question. Smokers have become the only group it's okay to discriminate against. Where are the libs on the fact that the NYC 1.50 tax is regressive, and disproportionately affects the poor?

[CaptRon]

I'm no attorney, but the fact that these taxes are aimed at one particular group of people and are, in reality, punitive, seems to me they are a bill of attainder and thus unconstitutional.

[SheLion]

If you all will read my #7 post, you will understand a little more.

[Lizard_King]

Outstanding website, madam. I have to travel abroad often, so I have the benefit of duty free cigarrettes...The few times I have quit (like 2 weeks before USMC training), I almost felt like I was betraying a noble cause. The ads, the whiners, the taxes...they drive me back into Marlboro Country again and again.

Again, great site.

[Lizard_King]

"American puritanism - never absent but cyclically waxing and waning - is back again...Somehow, I think those seventeenth-century anabaptists would have approved."

You are obviously correct in asserting that the secular definition of Puritan is just as applicable. I guess even when it is appropriate I have a knee-jerk reaction to double-edged criticisms of liberals (ie Oh yes, those [bureaucrats,feminazis, etc] are terrible...almost as bad as [Republicans, the Religious Right, etc]), especially when they take the ever so fashionable step of trashing Christians.

Ann Coulter really bumped up my awareness of that phenomenon, and it has made a deep impression on me ever since.

[Lizard_King]

I had not made the mental connection from tax pirate to ...umm...other type of pirate. I wonder if this is a more arcane step in the general anti-heterosexual agenda, or just one more fun chance for big Joe to define morality for the rest of us.

[Great Dane]

Haven't seen you here before, nice to have you onboard, we need all the help we can get. :-}

[SheLion]

Outstanding website, madam. I have to travel abroad often, so I have the benefit of duty free cigarrettes...The few times I have quit (like 2 weeks before USMC training), I almost felt like I was betraying a noble cause. The ads, the whiners, the taxes...they drive me back into Marlboro Country again and again.

Well, by being overseas, if you can get American Brand cigarettes duty free, that saves a lot on the cost. However, those of us that are stuck in the U.S. with Governors who think it's their "moral" duty to stick it to the smokers and continually raise the cigarette taxes, spewing constantly “It’s for the kids, you know,” which is a bunch of bunk!

They thought they found the perfect target to continually feed into their state coffers, because they KNOW that smokers, who are smoking a LEGAL commodity, will not quit what we enjoy. However, they never counted on the fact that we are not all sheeple out here! They did not count on the many other ways that we can buy and afford cigarettes without feeding into their honey pots any longer. We buy from the Internet, the Reservations and also, becoming quite popular, by rolling our own.

Since smokers are finding their way around the outrageous taxes on cigarettes, (It IS the American way to buy cheap), now they are calling us “criminals” because we are no longer paying into their money barrels to “help balance their budgets!” Yes, right, put the whole weight of the state on the backs of 1 out of 4 who wish to smoke. Sounds fair, doesn’t it? NOT!

There is no excuse today for smokers to give up something they enjoy because they have to pay $45 to $50 dollars a carton! I went from paying $50 dollars a carton to a little under $8 dollars a carton just by rolling my own. Happy? You bet I am happy!!!

Good luck to you!!!! Thanks so much for the post!