Thursday, October 8, 1998
We didn’t start fire (government did)
SMOKING: Imposing laws on personal rights only kindles more
crimes
Laws forbidding smoking are ubiquitous. Mandatory helmet and
seat-belt laws are in existence in many places. Proposition 215 is
still being challenged in the courts. Everywhere you look, it seems
there are more and more laws that are trying to regulate what
people can and cannot do with their own bodies. So-called dangerous
activities are being regulated and banned because they are
supposedly "bad for us."
Our father, the government, is looking out for our best
interests by forcing us not to make decisions for ourselves. What
the fascists in Washington fail to realize is that stupidity cannot
be legislated against, and they are merely depriving us of our
liberty with these fatuous laws that are allegedly in our
interests.
Trying to protect Americans from themselves is nothing new. A
classic example is Prohibition. In 1919, the 18th amendment to the
Constitution prohibited the manufacture of alcoholic beverages.
This was supposed to prevent the hazards that come with alcohol
use. And we all know of the astounding successes that resulted.
Anyone who wanted a drink became a criminal. Bars were replaced by
underground speakeasies, and legitimate manufacturers were replaced
by bootleggers. Gang violence also became common.
There was massive corruption of judges and police. And no
attention was paid to the illegally manufactured liquor, leading to
injuries and deaths of many consumers. Prohibition was a miserable
failure that created more problems than it ever hoped to solve, and
it was eventually repealed. This is one example of how the
legislation of morality will fail.
The modern equivalent of Prohibition is the War on Drugs. Drugs
are bad for us, and so the government needs to step in and prevent
us from making a rational decision for ourselves about what we will
put into our own bodies. This started in 1985, when then-President
Reagan declared his all- out war on drugs.
And now our streets have never been safer, drug use is no longer
a problem among kids, the elderly can walk the streets without
fear, inner cities have become heaven on Earth, and the smart and
nerdy are lauded for their computer programming abilities.
Anyway, the real cost of the war on drugs and people has led to
the opposite of all this. Drug criminalization has led to increases
in drug violence. Criminalization merely drives the drug trade
underground, where prices are inflated, leading to prodigious
profits for dealers and deleterious consequences for users. Once
people are ensnared, they will do anything do get their necessary
fix. This includes prostitution and armed robbery. And treatment
becomes difficult since users are arrested and thrown in jail.
Prisons become clogged with people that should not be there, and
our streets become littered with addicts who have no other
choice.
Legal drugs are also becoming victim to regulation and
criminalization, and by this I mean tobacco. Smoking has replaced
pedophilia as the most stigmatized activity in society. Every other
second the government is banning smoking in another location.
Apparently, the new law is that you can only smoke in your closet
on Sundays between 3:00 p.m. and 4:00 p.m. on odd-numbered
dates.
In addition, prices are being artificially raised through tax
increases. This is meant to impede teen smoking. How successful is
this? Recently in Canada, the government decided to double the tax
on cigarettes. What this led to was the rise of organized crime in
the cigarette trade. People were buying boot-legged smokes at
prices below that of stores. Also, they sold to anyone who wanted
to buy, including children. This seems to be the direction we are
heading in with all these despotic laws on tobacco.
With all these new taxes now, the government becomes dependent
on this source of revenue. The most sickening thing is that some of
these taxes are used to fund schools. "Mommy, my school needs new
books. Could you and Dad put down a few Camels?" That shows you the
sagacious reasoning of the government. Let’s make our schools
dependent on an activity we want to banish. How can you blame the
tobacco companies for marketing to kids? They just want to provide
them with a solid education.
What these issues come down to is the simple notion of whether
we have the right to do what we want with our own bodies. The war
on drugs and cigarettes is infringing on our most basic rights as
Americans. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? What can
make you happier than some mescaline followed by a few
Marlboros?
It doesn’t matter if something is bad for me – that is my
responsibility. There are a number of goods that are more
pernicious. Cars kill more people than drugs. I can get into a car
and easily kill a number of people other than myself. If I inject
heroin into my own body, who am I harming? Potato chips are as
addictive as cigarettes. Whole ad campaigns exist around this fact.
And you cannot honestly say that eating potato chips for your
entire life is somehow more beneficial than smoking.
Property rights also become an issue in these cases, in
particular with smoking. Does the property owner have the right to
say what happens on his or her own property? It is true that
smokers can be harmful as well as annoying. However, not all people
feel this way. By regulating what actions can be taken on private
property, the government is violating rights guaranteed by the
Constitution.
What happens if a bar’s entire clientele consists of smokers? If
this is not the case, then the owner has the right to say "I don’t
want smoking on my establishment." Smoking and non-smoking
establishments will exist without the government mandating them
into existence. If a person does not like my policy, he or she does
not have to patronize my establishment. That way, the decision is
made by the people and not by some bombastic simpleton in
Sacramento or Washington.
Drug use is a perfectly natural activity. Every society in the
history of the world has had some form of conscious-altering
substance. Some Native American tribes had peyote, some Middle
Easterners have hashish, some Southeast Asians have opium. It is
not natural for humans to be sober all the time. It is good for us
to go out and mess with our heads a little. Even animals have been
known to get high. Sharks frequent ocean currents which give them
rushes of oxygen to the brain. Elephants have been known to find
plants that contain water with alcoholic content. (Elephants can be
such jerks when they are drunk.)
Granted, these actions can and usually do result in adverse
consequences. We are all rational people, however, capable of
making decisions for ourselves without the government interfering
in our most basic rights as humans.
The war on drugs is nothing more than a war on people. Our
liberties are being oxidized so the government can tell us what is
good for us.
If we truly live in a free society, it is not then the business
of the government to regulate our bodies. The crackdown on both
illegal drugs and tobacco has caused more harm than good.
Matthew Gever
Gever doesn’t smoke, but he does like to shake his ash. If you
want to watch, you can send an invite to [email protected].
Comments, feedback, problems?
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