Persecuting smoking and smokers is a modern witch hunt among the left, to the point of being anti-Science. | Persecuting smoking and smokers is a modern witch hunt among the left, as proven by the intolerance of progressive areas (California, Oregon, Washington, NY, Mass., etc). Of course that's anti-Science. While smoking isn't healthy it's not as unhealthy as a bad genes, not exercising, bad diet, or bad attitude (stress). |
~ Aristotle Sabouni
Created: 1994-06-12
|
| Left |
Right |
| Persecuting smoking and smokers is a modern witch hunt among the left, as proven by the intolerance of progressive areas (California, Oregon, Washington, NY, Mass., etc). Of course that's anti-Science. |
While smoking isn't healthy it's not as unhealthy as a bad genes, not exercising, bad diet, or bad attitude (stress). Safer alternatives like vaping are attacked by the left, which would save lives/health. It's not about the habbit, it's about money/power/control. |
If you can regulate smoking based on public health claims then the state could regulate all those others (and some are trying. Many of the studies were fraudulent to get the laws, doubly so for the second hand smoke scares, or the false (unsupported) claims that it increases healthcare costs (they die quicker so it saves money). It was all flim-flam to allow the anti-liberty fascists to tell us what to do with our bodies, in our property, "for our own good".
Smoking laws are about one thing: one group making an excuse to oppress another, under the false flag of it being, "for their own good". It feeds the virtue signalers their red meat, as hating on the villain of the week (some minority group like smokers) is their key to happiness. In California smokers were being treated like antebellum blacks; with being barred from establishments, insults and attacks, special fees and areas to exclude them, and so on. From segregation to apartheid, with smokers areas being mandated under law and/or we just outlaw smokers from whole categories of establishments, building, public places, and so on. All in the name of the greater good. If that's done by free will of the establishment owners? That's freedom. When it's done by the will of the state? That's tyranny.
| 🗒️ Note: |
|---|
Personally:
- I don't like smoking. I try to convince people to stop.
- I don't like second-hand smoke. I ask/encourage people to not smoke around me.
- I avoid frequenting places where there is a lot of smoking, and am more likely to frequent a smoke-free business, or work at a smoke-free job.
But as much as I don't like those things, I like tyranny and abuse of power even less. I also value doing things the right way, rather than taking shortcuts and doing them the wrong way. The process is as important (or more important) than the goal. Education, encouragement, tolerance (but dissatisfaction) is the right way. Govt. guns to rob people of life, liberty or property because they are doing something you don't like is the wrong way! Especially if you are trying to teach people to respect themselves (and others), take responsibility for their own actions, and make the world a better place. It is even more wrong if you are trying to teach people to belong to a society, instead of feeling isolated and resentful towards it. So while I dislike smoking, you're only free if you can choose to make bad choices. And their habit is less foul than the view of those who would oppress them. Most of the oppressors rationalizations are complete bullshit and hypocrisy. And both of those are far worse than smoking. |
Anti-smokers -
One of the thing that helps the pro-smoking argument was the dishonesty of the anti-Smokers... if you have to lie for your cause, you must not have a good cause (or be a good person, that I want to support). And virtually all the anti-smokers are either misinformed boobs, or just outright liars. Moral busybodies -
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive... The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. ~ C.S. Lewis Secondhand Smoke -
The left's war on liberty (and the battle against smokers) wasn't working fast enough (despite exaggerations and fear mongering), so they magnified the Junk Science (exaggerations) on smoking to include "second hand smoke". Which also gets debunked, but takes years or decades, while the lies have immediate effect. Smoke is pollution -
Seriously. This was another argument made as an excuse to intrude on smokers liberty. If you're in an enclosed place and have asthma or COPD, etc., it's not good. If I owned a business, I wouldn't allow smoking in it. But we're talking about should the government say that it's so polluting, that they have a right to regulate private businesses and homes? No. Smoking and Healthcare costs -
An argument used to justify anti-smoking laws was that smoking increases healthcare costs -- as if that meant that it was OK for the government to then tell you what you can do with your body as a cost savings measure. In truth, most healthcare costs are late in life, and smokers die quicker and thus cheaper than everyone else. So it's a cost benefit. Smoking arrest -
I was pulling in to gas station and as I got out of my car I noticed the cop watching a woman smoking a cigarette while gassing up her car... I looked out and her arm was on fire, and as I watched as he put the fire out and started cuffing her while opening the back of the squad car.... Smoking in Hawaii -
To show how absurd it is, Hawaii attempted to raise the age for smoking tobacco to 100. You can't reductio ad absurdum the left, because they've already gone there. Now they haven't actually done it, but that they would think about it and not fire everyone who suggested it, tells you all you need to know about their attitudes on freedom/tolerance. Smoking is liberty -
I don't smoke, and I don't like it. I'm not trying to glorify it. But Smoking is liberty. It is someone doing something I don't like or support personally, but in a free country, it means people get to do things I don't like (as long as it doesn't endanger anyone else). And if we are informed, we know that Secondhand Smoke risks are bullshit and exaggerated. Smoking is unhealthy -
Yes, smoking is unhealthy -- but not as unhealthy as most other things in our society (your life). If the government can regulate smoking, "for your own good", than they can regulate other factors that are a far bigger influence on your health -- your diet, exercise, genes or your attitude. So attacking smoking for health reasons, is just a rationalization. Smoking on a plane -
Flying back to O.C. from a semester at an Illinois College in 1982. Back then spoke-and-hub meant it was cheaper to fly from Chicago to L.A. via NYC's JFK airport (no direct flights for you). I'm on a 747, in the middle of its 3-4-3 seating, and the girl next to me sparks up a doobie in honor of Nancy's "just say 'no' to drugs campaign", and I got lit. Smoking pot hypocrisy -
While California (and liberal places) hate smokers with a blind, seething, "we know better than you" passion... they make an exception for slackers and pot-smokers. Those are OK, so get a special exemption from harassment. Which shows the hypocrisy of their position. They don't care about smoking, they want to tell you what to do. Vaping hypocrisy -
E-Cigarettes and vaping is less offensive and far more healthy than smoking; the the fascists are against it. Why? Because it doesn't generate them as much tax/fine revenue as tobacco. I wouldn't say it is a "healthy" vice, but it's less unhealthy than drinking, eating poorly, avoiding exercise or voting Democrat. So where do you draw the lines and why?
These laws don't really seem to work. They keep making laws, and people keep figuring ways around them. They outlawed smoking in restaurants -- so now many truck stops are "private dining clubs", where you have to pay $.05 to join, and then there is smoking inside. People got killed for breaking the smoking laws and taxes. And the trend? Well it has dropped from 23% to 16% since enacted in 1998 or so (30% drop). On the other hand, smoking had dropped from 36% to 23% over the prior couple decades (36% drop). And from 45% the couple decades before that (26% drop). In other words, the rate of change didn't get better, it actually seemed to get worse. While teen smoking appears to have gone down, that unless you consider vaping the same thing, then it is way up.
So the laws failed to significantly decrease smoking (over the trend), they made people more contemptuous of the laws, lawmakers, and resentful of each other. Those who bully them for smoking or making laws are madder. Those who want to bully hate the people who get around the laws. This is a liberal win: everyone hates each other more.
Think of what these laws really say;
- You are not free to do what you want with your own body. If the masses don't approve, they will get you! No respect for your privacy or liberty. Screw you. The pleasure-Nazi's will cram their views of what is acceptable enjoyment down your throat.
- You are not free to do what you want with your own business. You can't cater to your customers and make your own choices. The masses get to decide how you are to run your business and your life.
- Customers aren't free to leave an establishment that they don't approve of. Workers aren't free to choose their place of employment. Market forces don't work (despite proof to the contrary). We really need the government to do for them what they can't do for themselves. (That ought to teach individual responsibility).
- The masses should be free to tyrannize whomever they don't agree with at the time.
- Majority rules (group-think)! Conformity becomes more important than freedom.
- The means aren't important -- only the ends (and don't think too hard, 'cause the ends won't be that great either).
- Deep pockets, special interests, and self-righteous, judgmental, over-emotion, know-it-all pricks will prevail over reason, tolerance, and freedom.
I know that sounds a bit histrionic, but this nation was founded on freedom, not bullying.
I warned in the 1990's that this was the first step towards the nanny-state micromanaging our diet, exercise, healthcare and breeding was this anti-smoking crusade. I wasn't wrong, as the cry-bullies have come after those other things too. Once you give the bullies what they want in one area (smoking laws), it doesn't assuage them, it emboldens them to encroach on the next area even more. They have a recipe to divide us and conquer our freedom... they will rinse and repeat, until we make them stop.
So I do believe in encouraging people to do what is right, and I would encourage people to stop smoking. You want to make rules about your property, fine, I am all for it. Don't allow people to smoke in YOUR house, or YOUR car, or YOUR business; I don't. You want to deal with others in our society like they are humans, and ask them to stop smoking around you, great! I do that too. But anti-smoking laws are just about oppression. This is about a vocal few, oppressing others, and too many standing by and letting it happen. And it led to the next predictable step towards the tyrannical dystopia of group think.
🔗 More
The Left Lies
When the truth disagrees with your agenda, you can grow (change) or lie. The left usually chooses the latter.
|
|
|
California
This article lists some of the intolerance, incompetence, and progressivism that have come to exemplify the Golden State.
|
|
|
TBD
List all the articles that have work to be done on them.
|
|
|
Bans
Banning something is the tool of a weak (and authoritarian) mind. The go-to-solution for those who can't persuade.
|
|
|
Fake Studies
This is a list of things that people believe, based on "Studies" that have been debunked or discredited.
|
|
|
Alt-Liberty
Two different Americas: one that's striving for more liberty, and another that's striving for less.
|
|
|
Intolerance
Tolerance is how you treat people you don't agree with.
|
|
|
🔗 Links
Tags: Left Lies California TBD Alt-Science Bans Fake Studies Alt-Liberty Intolerance
