Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Go Out For A Smoke

The anti-smoking radicals are at it again, and Aberdeen seems to be leading the way. 

Let's all agree that smoking is a bad habit, one that it is foolish to start.  I certainly don't smoke.  But is it one that needs this level of regulation?  The question is whether smoking is a public or private vice.  Some argue that smokers cost us money in higher health insurance bills and public health costs.  But smokers are a net plus to the public coffers, since they pay exhorbitant taxes on tobacco and die earlier, thus receiving Social Security and Medicare for a shorter period of time.  So arguments that smoking is a public matter must rest on second hand smoke data. 

But let me ask this question, and be honest.  What would cause more beneficial results for the nation?  Option one: all smokers stop smoking.  Option two: all drinkers stop drinking.  Yes, smoking attacks your health, but alcohol attacks the soul.  Think about it.  If everyone stopped drinking there would be no more alcoholism.  Far fewer families broken apart.  Less abuse.  Fewer days missed of work.  Fewer lives destroyed.  So why not go after alcohol?  Because most people drink, but few people smoke.  Smokers are an easy target.  To be clear, I think laws banning alcohol use would be just as dumb as laws against tobacco.  But I am sure that if we were to ban one or the other, the public benefit would clearly be greater in banning alcohol.

Smokers are also attacked because of a cult of the body.  It isn't just unhealthy to be a smoker, it's sinful.  This why radio talk show host Dennis Prager often points out that when he asks people whether they'd want their kids to be smokers or cheaters, they pick cheaters.  You see, cheating is simply a moral failing, but smoking is that modern sin against the body. As we all know there is nothing worse than death.  Certainly not dishonor. 

The anti-smoking extremists are puritanical in their approach to tobacco.  So obsessed are they at stamping out private vice that they use the public power to force people to be healthy.  Here how Alexis de Tocqueville concludes his discussion of the onerous laws passed by the original Puritans:

Finally, sometimes the passion for regulation which possessed them led them to interfere in matters completely unworthy of such attention.  Hence there is a clause in the same code forbidding the use of tobacco.