God hates fags?

Of the two major political parties, one is especially obsessed with persecuting a minority of
Americans who engage in an activity which the party considers unhealthy, disgusting,
and immoral.

No, I’m not talking about anti-gay Republicans. I’m talking about mostly “liberal” Democrats who are waging a holy war against cigarette smokers.

The war on tobacco started as a war on smoking but now that the smokers’ ranks have been reduced down to an irredeemable hard core, it has morphed into a weird culture war. Smokers are being treated vindictively and scapegoated in a mean-spirited manner far beyond any actual threat to public health:

ATLANTA (AP) — First it was bars, restaurants and office buildings. Now the front lines of the “No Smoking” battle have moved outdoors.

City parks, public beaches, college campuses and other outdoor venues across the country are putting up signs telling smokers they can’t light up. Outdoor smoking bans have nearly doubled in the last five years, with the tally now at nearly 2,600 and more are in the works.

But some experts question the main rationale for the bans, saying there’s not good medical evidence that cigarette smoke outdoors can harm the health of children and other passers-by.

Whether it is a long-term health issue for a lot of people “is still up in the air,” said Neil Klepeis, a Stanford University researcher whose work is cited by advocates of outdoor bans.

Ronald Bayer, a Columbia University professor, put it in even starker terms.

“The evidence of a risk to people in open-air settings is flimsy,” he said.

Evidence? Activists don’t need no steenking evidence. What matters to them is that the behavior is evil, and it must be stopped. Even the appearance of smoking:

…despite evidence that e-cigarettes reduce overall harm from smoking, “many anti-smoking groups oppose these products because they are blinded by ideology: they find it difficult, if not impossible, to endorse a behavior that looks like smoking, even though it is literally saving people’s lives.

Workplace crackdowns are no longer limited to whether an employee smokes on the job or during business hours. Employers are now testing employees for nicotine:

Critics argue that while smoking is vilified, a host of other unhealthy behavior is ignored during the hiring process, such as excessive drinking, eating too much junk food and engaging in risky activities, such as motorcycle riding.

“Not all slopes are slippery but this one really is,” said Lewis Maltby, president on the National Workrights Institute, a nonprofit offshoot of the American Civil Liberties Union based in Princeton, N.J. “The starting point for us is your boss doesn’t have the right to tell you what to do in your own home. The hospital can tell you what to do during the week while you are at work, but your boss has no business telling you what you can and can’t do while you are at home.”

Smokers more embattled than ever. I’m especially annoyed by the Nicotine Nazis’ attempt to ban the APPEARANCE of smoking.

Sorry, but that won’t cut it. We still have freedom of expression. Even where smoking is prohibited, citizens still have a First Amendment to publicly brandish cigarettes, and even to “glamorize” them.

So I don’t know what to do, but I have to start somewhere, and Bill Quick’s link to my earlier post inspired me to redesign the NEW DEAL cigarette package.

It would also be a ton of fun to set up a non-profit smokers’ advocacy group, and actually run public service messages touting the known medical benefits of smoking. (Right now, the mere discussion of such things is considered “scientific blasphemy.”)

And why not? If we can have medical marijuana, is medical tobacco too much?


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One response to “God hates fags?”

  1. Frank Avatar
    Frank

    The health benefits of smoking may include longevity. Jeanne Calment lived to 122, the oldest confirmed lifespan in history.

    Calment smoked from the age of 21 (1896) to 117 (1992) She also had …a diet of port wine, and ate nearly one kilogram (2.2 lb) of chocolate every week.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeanne_Calment#cite_note-NYTimesDeath-2