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Beware: the Health Nazis are on the March...Mar 31 '04 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line It all started with a smoking ban in New York. Now the health lobby is targeting guns, potato chips, McNuggets, SUV’s, and yes booze. What’s next? Mandatory sleeping hours?
Not since Joseph McCarthy’s scare tactics have we seen such an assault on personal freedoms, all in the name of perfect health. It all began with Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s smoking ban, imposed on all New York City bars, restaurants, pool halls, and anything else related to the city’s nightlife. And I thought smoking was already banned in offices, daytime retail establishments, theaters, and mass transit systems. While it hasn’t been the nightlife destroyer that some predicted it to be, neither has it brought hordes of non-smokers into restaurants or bars. It has, however, led to the predictable groups of smoking patrons chatting outside or in the street at 1 AM, just outside establishments that prohibited people under 21 or 18 from entering to buy beer (or smoke) anyway. Now low-rise-loving NIMBY’s in nearby residencies are babbling about all this loud chatter just outside their windows, and trying to force through strict noise pollution laws that will become an added burden on the city’s nightlife. If all of you think that you can circumvent the ban when you light up in your own home or drive to another state to find a bar with ashtrays (New Jersey anyone?), think again. The smoking ban in the Big Apple IMO has turned out to be the starting point for an ongoing drive to abolish tobacco completely in the US, virtually every state, New York, New Jersey, California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Kentucky, you name it. The very moment I read about the Surgeon General, Richard Carmona, calling for a total ban (read: prohibition amendment) on all tobacco products nationwide (and surgeon generals are always dead serious), I lost all faith in the anti-smoking movement. He said this just four months after New York’s smoking ban, which has since been extended to the entire state up to Lake Ontario. Later the British Journal the Lancet said exactly the same thing. Coincidence? I think not. Quite simply an activist movement originally encouraging people to quit an obviously lung-hurting habit via special programs and nicotine gum has begun to evolve into an evil (just as evil as secondhand smoke) Marxist extremist campaign trying to force through stringent laws that prohibit people’s rights even when they’re over 18. When Boston imposed its own smoking ban, for example, these smoke Nazis and their allies in the MA State legislature immediately forced through a statewide ban at gunpoint. The state legislature in Albany did exactly the same thing four months after the city’s ban. The health fascists are now exerting pressure on New Jersey, where New Yorkers, both smokers and non-smokers, are jumping over the Hudson River to light up or enjoy the alluring atmosphere. A New York State legislator even introduced a bill (which thankfully did not pass) that would confiscate the cars of people caught smoking with open windows, whether a kid was in the back seat or not. I’m also sure you all know about California, where Santa Monica even enacted a law prohibiting cigarettes in beaches. Don't laugh. Inevitably these intolerant laws will encourage the prohibitionists. Although I’m not into smoking or the secondhand smoke related to it, and I support the laws against cigarette sales to minors under 18, I firmly oppose these even more stiff restrictions leading to another 18th Amendment for several reasons. You want to ban tobacco and turn possession of a cancer stick into a federal crime punishable by a prison term? OK, then watch gleefully as: 1. Smokers find themselves wanted fugitives and become fearful of going to quitting programs or buying nicotine gum lest an undercover cop or a zealous anti-smoking activist turned informer is at the drugstore or rehabilitation center to arrest them. Stigmatization and risk of imprisonment is no way to help anyone quit. A person at risk of arrest will not go into a drugstore to buy Nicorette or Nicoderm gum. 2. Watch as Philip Morris and all these other companies (they’re all food companies as well as tobacco companies) get sued or their property gets forfeited at the behest of Tobacco-Free Kids, and hundreds of thousands of employees and stockholders, (both smokers and non-smokers) get thrown out into the unemployment lines, evicted from their homes when they can’t pay the bills or their low-wage jobs cannot help them do so, ready to turn into the next Timothy McVeigh, Pablo Escobar, or Adolf Hitler. 3. The War on Drugs gets overwhelmed as illegal tobacco farms pop up all over the place, both in Colombia and the US, and DEA agents sent to shut these clandestine operations down find themselves facing a drug trafficker's assault rifle. Let’s sit down and watch as illegal tobacco money funds terrorist groups in South America who commit Nazi-like atrocities against civilians and political opponents. Imagine the production of tobacco passing from legitimate companies to evil entities like the Crips & Bloods, Latin Kings, drug cartels in Mexico and Colombia, the Russian Mafia, the Japanese Yakuza, and even Hamas and Al Qaeda. These crime groups have every incentive to INCREASE the amount of nicotine and tar to keep their customers hooked. 4. It paves the way for other types of health Nazis calling for stiff governmental restrictions and even strict bans such as fast food (super sized or not), anything resembling a hamburger, Sport Utility vehicles, anything that remains open after 1 AM (sleep deprivation?), and of course hunting rifles and even tighter restrictions on alcohol (yes it’s happening again). The smoking bans IMO are only a first step toward health activists pressuring governments to restrict your personal rights. That stuff is happening already. Health activism of all types has begun to turn into a modern form of intolerant National Socialism. Remember these intolerant pro-life extremists who shot dead abortion doctors while condemning them for “murdering babies”? Now left-leaning health activists may be adopting these same Gestapo tactics. Worst of all are the trial lawyers who follow an intolerant ideology and want to profit from bankrupting legitimate companies and putting thousands out of work. There is already a growing assault on anything resembling a juicy, well-cooked hamburger from McDonald’s. The 50 million or so Americans with round bellies classified as obese are the main fuel for this latest assault. Ironically those who don’t smoke are more likely to be obese (since nicotine curbs a person’s appetite), and if they’re not inhaling carcinogens they’re ingesting high levels of fats, unhealthy carbs, cholesterol, and what not. You’ve already heard about these perverted lawsuits from people claiming that they were duped into eating super-sized fast foods and got morbidly obese as a result. Vegetarian groups are clearly eager to force strict vegetarian diets down people’s throats at all costs for this reason. It’s no coincidence that PETA’s ‘Animal Holocaust’ campaign began last year just as ‘medical evidence’ against meat eating, or even overeating of any type was piling up. To see an otherwise reputable, if confrontational, animal-rights organization turn into this extremist Goebbels-imitating propaganda source is at best irritating. Joseph Goebbels, whose square-mustached boss was a strict vegetarian and an anti-Semite, couldn’t have been more proud. If this keeps up, forced-sleep activists, those who want to pressure everyone to go straight to bed before 11 PM every night, may not be far behind. I’ve already read reports of medical researchers calling for virtually all people to go to sleep right at that time, with mandatory 8-hour sleeping periods. I fear such a trend is happening already. Bloomberg recently tried to impose noise restrictions on all the city’s night establishments, no doubt to oppress groups of smokers chatting out on the street and virtually any non-smoker who likes loud music and drinking and chatting. Basically he wanted to force all establishments to ‘hush up’ after 1 AM by reducing their music and conversation levels to a way-too-quiet level. Although the plan was scrapped for now, Bloomberg now wants to try to impose it again soon. 9-to-5 Boston anyone? I can already imagine it now about a decade down the road… “We must impose a strict gun ban nationwide.” “We must use it to prevent criminals from getting these guns and using them in crimes”. Has anyone heard of illegal arms trafficking, with arms smuggled from Eastern Europe? It does exist. And what’s the point of suing hardened criminals armed with stolen guns or drugs who would easily track down and try to kill the plaintiff and his or her trial lawyer? I guess that’s what the Founding Fathers were seeking to prevent when they approved the Second Amendment, which obviously prevents state and federal governments from banning gun ownership altogether. And did I forget alcohol? I personally consider alcohol to be more hazardous and behavior altering than tobacco. At least cigarettes don’t slur your speech or make you stagger, make you vomit from all that ugly stuff, destroy your liver over time, cause you to lose control or get into bar brawls, or get you arrested for DWI after your car strikes a power line. Even so, I’m already hearing of activists starting to call for the 18th Amendment to be brought back. Let’s not get into what happened last time. It started with the “smoke Nazis” showing real TV images of people smoking just outside in freezing weather saying, “This is Exactly what We’re doing to you who Smoke!! Quit or Else!” Now it’s expanding to “Just Say No to Chicken McNuggets!” “Ban all SUV’s!” “Abolish all Meat Products!” “Those who give Alcohol to Kids must be Imprisoned for Life!” and so on and on. It’s a sad world we’re living in when it took an act of the US Congress to stop (for now) the multiplying “fast food causes obesity” lawsuits that are threatening to bankrupt the entire food industry. Something has to be done about those Smoke Nazis and other Health Nazis before they forcibly turn the entire country into a nursing home. Let’s not even get started on SUV’s, since this Epinionator owns a Toyota 4-Runner and will not be giving it away anytime soon.  |
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