“Indeed, why do we feel we’re having the wrong conversation here, that the real debate folks are itching to have is whether the addictive drug tobacco should be legal in America at all, instead of this incremental stuff that pollutes the air with all sorts of problematic tangential issues, like property rights?”
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And create a MASSIVE expansion of the war on drugs? No thanks. I don’t think the gangs and organized crime syndicates need BILLIONS in new revenue. Too many people die from cigarette smoke already. We don’t need people literally murdering others over them, too.
Besides, if it became illegal to smoke, wouldn’t that force everyone who wanted to smoke into their own homes? Certainly the availability would decrease, but everyone who smoked would be doing it inside with the doors and windows closed.
Is our foster care system ready for a massive influx of new kids taken away from their parents?
Our foster care system isn’t ready for the massive influx of kids they’re receiving now!
We should make it as annoying and inconvenient as possible to find a place to smoke, raise cigarette taxes with the revenues MANDATED to go into tobacco prevention and cessation efforts, encourage cessation and educate, educate, educate in order to prevent our kids from starting in the first place.
Would you rather have an expansion of the nanny state or an expansion of the police state?
Knight, I can’t believe you’re trying to be on both sides of the fence on this one. It leads to so many inconsistencies.
You said, “if it became illegal to smoke, wouldn’t that force everyone who wanted to smoke into their homes?”
How is this outcome any different than “mak[ing] it as annoying and inconvenient as possible to find a place to smoke”? Won’t that just force everyone who wants to smoke into their homes as well?
You said, “Is our foster care system ready for a massive influx of new kids taken away from their parents?”
If smoking is as harmful as you say it is, then what difference does it make whether the foster care system is ready to receive these children? Should we leave children in a home with a child abuser because the system is too strained? Aren’t these smoking parents killing their children? Remember, on another post, you said this:
If you really believe that, how can you justify leaving children in an environment where they are exposed to this “assault with toxic chemicals” every day and night for 16-18 years? How can you defend letting parents smoke in front of their underage children when, as you state elsewhere, “about 85% of smokers start before age 18”?
You say, “I don’t think the gangs and organized crime syndicates need BILLIONS in new revenue. Too many people die from cigarette smoke already.”
So your contention is that more people would die from organized crime if we outlawed cigarettes than the “30-60 thousand deaths a year” from second-hand smoke? You’re willing to sacrifice defenseless children’s lives — especially those children of the approx. 1/5 of the U.S. population that smokes — to maintain peace and increase cigarette tax receipts?
I’m not buying it, Knight. If smoking is as bad as you say, then you should be the first one on the bandwagon to outlaw it.
C.J.,
As I’ve said in a previous comment on your blog, I would LOVE to see every cigarette and tobacco plant burned in one final conflagration, eliminating the #1 cause of preventable death & disability in the United States for good.
However, we have to deal with reality, and that is not a practical solution. Do you really think there would be LESS opposition to getting a total tobacco ban put in place? The tobacco lobby has lost power in the last twenty years, but they still have an incredible amount of money to throw around … and that money brings power. No one with ANY political clout is even mentioning the possibility of outlawing tobacco. I don’t think even Henry Waxman would be THAT bold, and he’s the biggest anti-smoking diehard in any branch of the federal government.
I’d like to buy the world a Coke and live in perfect harmony, but that’s just not going to happen. A public smoking ban is reasonable and feasible, and it will provide a public health benefit. Is it the perfect solution? Of course not … but I think it’s better than the status quo.
I also said previously that I WOULD support using chronic tobacco exposure as grounds for establishing medical neglect. However, MOST smoking parents will at least go smoke out on the back porch or the front step instead of smoking inside the house in front of their kids … at least the majority of the time. If they were going to get arrested for smoking on their own property but in view of the public, they would NEVER do it.
Most smokers acknowledge that they have a nasty habit that’s killing them. Most smokers want to quit. Most smokers have tried … several times. Statistically there’s only a 1 in 20 chance of quitting if you go cold turkey. Smoking cessation programs like the American Lung Association’s Freedom from Smoking are wonderful … they double your chances! (YEAH!) To 10% (ohh…) Smoking cessation therapies like Nicotine replacement and buproprion (Wellbutrin), when used WITH a smoking cessation therapy program, increase your chances to somewhere between 15 and 25% in the long term. On a population basis, those small improvements make BIG differences (hundreds and thousands more people successfully quitting), but for the individual they can be frustrating. Even with a full court press, you stand about a 3 out of 4 chance of failure. It’s HARD to quit, and I have incredible admiration for those who have done so.
Because of those grim statistics, I don’t think it’s right to turn every smoker into a criminal. For the ~15% of smokers who started smoking after age 18 (and after the first Surgeon General’s warning in 1966) … I have NO sympathy. None. Zero. They should have known better. However, the VAST majority start before 18, a majority start before 16 and a large fraction start before 14! We ALL do dumb stuff when we’re teenagers. Unfortunately, those who chose smoking as their “dumb thing” are now saddled with a lifelong addiction. Your solution is to throw all those people in jail, C.J.?
The War on Drugs has been one of the biggest, most expensive and most abject policy failures of the last century. Drugs are more plentiful and cheap now than ever before, and police powers have expanded in dangerous ways. Interdiction just doesn’t work! It didn’t work in the 1920’s for alcohol. It’s not working in the modern era for cocaine, marijuana and opiates. Why would we try it AGAIN? It’s like that Simpsons episode where Lisa hooks electrodes up to a cupcake and watches Homer grab it and shock himself … over and over and over and over again. We’d be like Homer Simpson, never learning from our mistakes.
So rather than criminalize the act of smoking, you’d rather criminalize the property owner who allows people to smoke in his restaurant because it’s the path of least resistance. Restaurateurs don’t have as powerful of a lobby in government and there’s less likelihood that crime would increase as a result, so that makes it okay to take away their rights in order to get back at the smokers? The ends justify the means?
If it’s not enough of a crisis to warrant removing children from homes (unless it’s “chronic”) when they’re the most at risk and most defenseless, then I don’t believe that it’s worth giving up more of our property rights to the government to “protect” adults who are fully capable of protecting themselves from decidedly non-“chronic” exposure to smoke by simply going to a non-smoking restaurant or eating at home.
I’m sorry, C.J. … I just don’t see a public smoking ban as a tragic loss of liberty for small business owners. There have been no catastrophic changes in any of the myriad of other towns and cities that have adopted such resolutions. I don’t think Peoria will be any different. I’d rather see the ban statewide so that some of the “competitive advantage” arguments between local municipalities would go away – although I think those concerns are WAY overblown. The St. Louis metro area had a patchwork of ban and no-ban municipalities, and there were no great changes there. A lot of these concerns are hot air hyped up by the tobacco industry – like the Springfield situation we both blogged about a while back.
I’d have no objections to a bar or restaurant owner making their place a private club for smokers, where everyone ACTIVELY consents to tobacco exposure. I’d think they were stupidly endangering their own health … but I wouldn’t object to such an establishment.
Some of those smoky hole-in-the-wall places that Chef Kevin talks about might actually make a play to increase their business that way if a ban goes into effect. They could offer themselves as a “refuge for the persecuted smoker” (a St. Louis tobacco & liquor shop owner used that line in his ads). Heck, they’d probably get prop-up bucks from Big Tobacco if they sought it out.