Prohibition has no place in the anti-smoking camp
July 31, 2003 ~ 4:43 p.m.
Well, my rant against spammers generated quite a bit of commiseration from a few other writers, and I�d like to thank sixweasels, mr-knowitall, flinnt, roklobster (snogs to you too, heh), treewillow, and sionainne for clocking in with their input. Be you a left-winger, centrist, or right-winger, I think we can all come together in agreement on what a horrible curse spam and junk mail is. The anti-spam movement, if one was to be galvanized on an insurmountable level, could unite a lot of people, normally of otherwise disparate mindsets. Seriously, think about that.
I had an argument with the wife last night regarding smoking. I played devil�s advocate and argued that since tobacco is a legal product, you cannot prohibit it. Even if the government did, a black market would be created for tobacco and contribute even more to the inanity of the futile �War on Drugs,� which makes the Vietnam conflict look like a cakewalk for American policy wonks.
As someone who wants to remove a substance from the list of prohibited items�cannabis�the last thing I care to hear is talk of banning another, currently legal item. There has got to be a compromise between pure, raw libertarianism which stipulates that a smoker should be allowed to light up anywhere at anytime because his cigarettes are a legally purchased product and should not be subject to government control (bad policy), and the prohibitionist impulse which stipulates that for the common good, we need to stamp out smoking everywhere, even to the point that whatever few venues that smokers do have left to light up�such as the outdoors�is forbidden (a just as equally bad policy).
We have levied punitive taxes on cigarettes and should perhaps consider hiking them up even more. We have plastered the boxes of the product with health warnings. We have moved toward smoke-free environments, which is a very good thing. You can�t drink in the office, so why should you be able to smoke there? However, we should not let anti-smoking zealotry make out that the smoking of a cigarette�a legal product�is a crime. It is an infraction of the public�s rights when no smoking rules are broken and in such instances renegade smokers, of which there seem to be no shortage, should therefore face a moderate fine. But policies such as that recently introduced in New York City, where restaurants and bars have lost a whopping 25 percent of its customer base because the city has banned smoking point-blank, is nonsense and completely ignores both economic common sense and a libertarian ethos to which we, in a free society, should expect to be entitled to.
I have not become a smoker�s rights advocate, and I still stand by some of the frustration with smokers that fueled this entry that I wrote last summer. But I also, as of late, bristle at some of the extreme heavy-handedness that smokers have been subjected to. You can�t completely ban their vice just because the great majority of smokers are arrogant. That is twisting the law in a deleterious way and would not only set a bad precedent but set the stage for other forms of abusive government policy. Smokers have to abide by the rules we�ve established to protect those of us who do not smoke. But a prohibitionist policy is not the answer, and never will be.
� M.E.M.
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Copyright � 2001-2007 by M.E. Manning. All material is written by me, unless explicitly stated otherwise by use of footnotes or bylines. Do not copy or redistribute without my permission.
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