Smoking represents one of the largest hypocrisies in the United States: Although cigarettes are toxic, carcinogenic, addictive, harmful to
fetuses, and heavily regulated, they are most certainly still legal.
I find it interesting that when it comes to the U.S. government and drugs, the legality of a substance is determined not by its effect on the user’s health but on the drug’s alteration of the user’s mental state. The main aspect separating cigarette smoke and marijuana smoke is that one produces the desire to look like a haughty French supermodel, whereas the other produces the desire to eat copious amounts of generic chocolate breakfast cereal straight from the bag. Of course, it also doesn’t hurt that Big Tobacco puts a nice padding in the pockets of the U.S. government.
According to The Third World
Network, “U.S. trade officials … have led a sustained campaign to open markets in Japan, South Korea,
Taiwan and Thailand among the Asian nations. In 1995, for example, the U.S. embassy in Thailand intervened on behalf of U.S. tobacco companies when the government of
Thailand proposed regulations that
required the disclosure of ingredients of all brand-name cigarettes sold in Thailand.” This certainly explains why the United States could not ban tobacco within its own borders, the main goal being to keep up the façade in other nations that cigarettes are an acceptable product to use or trade.
However, this column is not about banning tobacco. As a proponent of ending the drug war, I don’t think cigarettes should be illegal any more than I think it should be illegal to do what I will with my evenings — even if that means waking up surrounded by crumbs of orange munchies. I
believe the government should certainly work to protect minors from making dangerous decisions to their developing brains and bodies, but I
remain skeptical of the government as a regulator of what type of mental
alteration I can and can’t achieve.
Still, as long as the U.S. government is in the habit of criminalizing substances, it seems to me the time has either come to ban it or cram it. A slew of new regulatory measures have popped up here and around the world, including one U.S. workplace policy prohibiting cigarette smoking, even if that smoking occurs outside of the workplace. A Michigan company, Weyco Inc., has reasoned that since smokers require higher health insurance coverage, the company shouldn’t be required to pay for their carcinogenic hobby. An interesting argument; however, does Weyco also plan to ban the consumption of refined sugar by employees with a precedent for diabetes? How about prohibiting workers from drinking
alcohol, which could be slowly
destroying their livers? I remain
surprised that no civil rights group has intervened on behalf of the 4th Amendment’s guarantee to privacy.
All of these policies are built around the base of former laws, such as some states’ ban on smoking in public buildings, restaurants, some number of feet from public property, and so on.
Although I agree that reducing secondhand smoke is important, I can’t help but note the hypocrisy in enforcing smoking bans, while at the same time conveniently overlooking toxic fuel emissions from nuclear power plants and even automobiles.
It seems much easier for the
government to persecute personal choices rather than big business choices. Until the U.S. government
is ready to take a true stand against the harmful impacts of products, a stand that is regulated by science rather than social choices, I find it
difficult to be in favor of these harsh tobacco regulations.
[email protected]