Re: OT: A Rare Voice of Sanity

Mike Burke wrote:
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php?/site/earticle/5419/

Perhaps the worm is beginning to turn at last.

Mique

Are you a tobacco addict, by any chance?

Injecting heroin publicly causes no injury to anyone else, neither, arguably, does smoking marijuana. I don't see the freedom flag being waved much for that kind of behaviour, though.

The consumption of tobacco in public is not so much an exercise in 'freedom' as it is a public demonstration of an addiction. Most smokers, if they were 'free' to exercise their personal choice, would not smoke at all. What has them crouching under outdoor canopies in freezing weather sucking on their ciggies is not some exercise in freedom, but the sad exhibition of their slavery to nicotine.

Dressing it all up in pretty freedom rhetoric is ludicrous - this is a societal-level health issue, and the anti-smoking effort has succeeded in stigmatizing and marginalizing smoking behavior. Thats not an indictment, but a positive outcome.

I love being able to go into establishments anywhere, breathe easily, and come out with my clothes not stinking of smoke. Its been such a great, dramatic change, and one that we could scarcely imagine a generation ago.

The writer blithely assumes that those 2.5 people suffering premature deaths from smoking represent a reasonable trade-off for smokers being able to inflict the side-effects of their addiction on the rest of us. I doubt that those 2.5 people would agree, nor would those extra people with respiratory problems think it was OK.

If tobacco did not have a 'grandfathered' status, the US FDA (nor its overseas equivalents) would never allow it to be introduced into society at all. Its clearly addictive, noxious, and provides insufficient benefits for it to be allowed to be marketed to anyone. Instead of complaining, nicotine addicts should be thankful that they have not yet been forced to register as addicts in order to continue to obtain their fix - from the pharmacy, which is where nicotine belongs, not in the local 711.

Ian
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Relevant Pages

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