Liberal Lunacy 6: Anti-Smoking

I am not a smoker. I do not smoke, I have no intention of smoking. But I have no problem with other people smoking. Just like drinking. And just like drugs. Do not do them and do not plan to do them. But I recognize that people can make their own choices in life. If I do not agree with what they do to enjoy themselves I will not prevent them from doing so and I expect them to return me the same favor and not interfere with me. Sadly this simple concept is so hard for certain people to understand.

Now I know what you will tell me. You will tell me, "but these liberals are not trying to ban smoking, smoking is not banned, you can smoke if you really want to". This is true, smoking is not banned. But these liberals would like to see it banned. It is true that smoking is not banned, but there are a whole lot of people out there that would love to see it banned, or at least reduced to the point of it almost being non-existent.

I just had this realization when I saw a cigarette block. On this cigarette block it was written, in extremely huge letters, "Smoking Kills". And on the other side of this cigarette block it was written, "Smoking may reduce the blood flow and causes impotence".

I was surprised. I really did not know this was written on cigarette blocks. I thought it just had a surgeon general's warning about how dangerous it is. The last time I saw a cigarette block before today was a while back and I do not remember it saying how smoking kills and how it causes impotence.

I finally figured out what is going on with the whole smoking situation in the US. There are these liberals who really hate smoking and they want to use scare tactics to stop people from smoking.

Why do I say this? Because it is obvious from the way these warnings are phrased on cigarette blocks. These people gave up rationality a long long time ago and are playing a fear game. They want to scare the smokers as much as possible.

If these liberals said that tobacco companies must carry a warning message about the known harms of smoking that would be reasonable. That is an understandable position. For example, a small message somewhere on the block which said, "smoking has been proven to increase risks of ... ". This is a reasonable message. It cautions the smoker to know the possible health harm that can come from smoking.

Consider alcohol bottles. There is also a surgeon general warning. The bottle does not have written all across it "Drinking kills", rather it has a message box at the end of the bottle that writes the possible dangers that can come from excessive drinking. This is a reasonable caution.

But what is this whole "Smoking kills" caution about? It is an unreasonable statement. When you make a statement "smoking kills" it implies that the smoker will die instantaneously from smoking. I will say "bullets kill" because that is true. A bullet will most certainly kill you if it hits you in a vital organ. But I would never say "smoking kills" because that is disingenuous.

I thought the entire point of the FDA was to scientifically study the dangers of food and drugs for consumer protection? How is it in any way scientific to blow the dangers of smoking out of proportion and write "smoking kills" on all cigarettes? If we really wanted to be scientific we should write in a reasonable sized manner, "smoking has been found to increase risk for ...". That is it. That is honest and that is scientific. But when you want to write "smoking kills" that is no longer being scientific. That is flat out fear mongering. Not to mention it is unscientific also, and hence cannot be written, by FDA standards, on cigarette blocks.

The statement "smoking kills" is unscientific. As I said it sounds as if the smoker will immediately die from smoking. While in fact it takes many many years of continuously smoking to increase the risks of death. And that is just a risk. It is not even always guaranteed to target all people. This is why "smoking kills" is nothing but fear mongering - especially when it is written big all the way across cigarette blocks.

But it gets even dumber with the second message, "smoking causes impotence". That is humorously dumb. It is funny to put such a message on a block. As if the message that smoking will kill you is not enough to get people's attention. Now you need to also tell them that guys will fail to get boners. Yes, because that will really prevent smoking. If guys would not care about dying then they would care about not getting boners? What good is a boner on a dead guy? It really is so pathetically funny.

And again this message that "smoking causes impotence" is written all the way across the block. For what reason? It is obvious what the intention is. To scare people from smoking. That is all. It has no goal to be scientific or fair. It just wants to stop people from smoking.

These liberals are not rational about the smoking situation at all. They are practicing pure fear mongering on people who do smoke. It is just like parents who tell their children that they cannot let strangers into their house because the strangers will kill them ("kill" is really a euphemism for molest that parents do not want to explain to their little kids). As Doug Stanhope said in a comedy routine, "nobody wants to fuck your kids". The number of molested kids every year is extremely low. Statistically speaking letting a stranger into your house is no reason to be scared that he will molest your children. But parents are not rational about this. They assume the worst. But more than assuming the worst they scare their kids. They exaggerate the dangers of letting strangers into their house to scare their kids into listening to them.

What about various medical drugs that are used? Sure they come with a big list of possible dangers that they have. Many of them are far more dangerous than smoking. But not a single one has a big sign across it that says "codeine kills", for example. They simply list the possible risks and dangers along with some warning. All of this is stated in a calm tone and explained in a clear manner with no fear mongering.

Or what about alcohol? Alcohol is more dangerous than smoking. Rush Limbaugh made a good point when he said, "alcohol kills you faster than smoking". I think back to Purim and how many dumb Jewish kids end up in hospitals because of excessive drinking. None of them end up there from cigarettes but from drinking. Drinking is far more dangerous to them than smoking up on Purim. But why are there no signs which say "Alcohol kills"? Or why are there no signs which say "excessive alcohol makes you unable to preform sex"?

For me it is obvious what is going on. These liberals hate smoking for whatever reasons. I am not exactly sure why but it is clear from their intentions. They want to ban it. But they cannot. The smokers still can smoke. These liberals do not like that. So they attempt to come up with whatever method that they can to limit smoking as much as possible. Since that is the next best thing to banning smoking.

First, they want to scare people. Having a reasonable warning sign is not enough. They want to scare them into making them think they will die from smoking. In addition to scaring them sexually. Once these fear tactics are used they want to push scary imagery on cigarette blocks to further frighten the smokers. But scare tactics are not enough, they realize it does not really work in eliminating smokers.

Second, once they used the scare tactics they go after various public places. They would love to see it outright banned, but it is too hard to do. So they go after public places. Like parks, for example. At this point they will remind you about the children. They will say, "think about the children who have to be exposed to all of this smoke". The "what about the children argument" never gets old.

Third, once they manage to get rid of it from various public places they go after restaurants (and casinos). But in this case it is not only the fault of these liberals. The war against restaurant smoking was waged also by anti-smoking restaurant competitors who were losing customers. There is a problem here, restaurants are private property. As private property they need to be respected as individual homes. If you do not want to be in a smoking area then do not go there, go to different restaurants that do not allow smoking. But it is not good enough for them. They want to see it gone even from private places too.

Fourth, tax cigarettes. The general rule of economics is that whatever you subsidize you get more of and whatever you tax you get less off. The first three tactics do not work as well as these liberals would like, so now they want to tax cigarettes to make them much more expensive for smokers to buy. That way, they hope, they can reduce the number of people who smoke who will simply not have the money to buy such expensive cigarettes. Sadly, they do not realize how they destroy tobacco businesses that end up losing out under such a tax to less-taxed tobacco businesses in other locations (as is happening in New York City).

These liberals who are anti-smoking obviously want to see it eliminated from their treatment of smoking. This is why I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that they would like to see it banned entirely if they can end up passing such a law.

The big irony behind of all of this is that as much as they hate smoking cigarettes they love smoking marijuana. Because marijuana, as they will tell you, is "natural". Wait, I thought tobacco was "natural" also? Why should they be free to smoke marijuana (which they should) but go after those who are free to smoke tobacco? End this double standard.