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Outlaw Smoking Now!
Kim’s recent post about smoking reminds me that I have an anti-smoking rant that I’ve been meaning to post about for a while now.
I have two questions. Why does anyone smoke, and why is smoking legal?
The only reason that anyone smokes is because they were tricked into it when they were young and stupid, and now they are addicted. Virtually no one starts smoking after their late teens/early twenties. Cigarette companies know this, so they deliberately target their advertising at young people. Who really thinks that Joe Camel or the Marlboro Man are cool, other than kids?
(Of course, some adults who smoke will claim they do it because they like it, not because they are addicted; but for the purposes of this discussion we will consider such blatant lying to be invalid evidence.)
This is an unfair and frankly predatory practice. It’s unfair because everyone is young and stupid for a while; it’s evil to take advantage of people in that state. And it’s predatory because their product hooks into you and kills you.
This brings us to question #2: why is smoking legal? Why are the cigarette companies allowed to exist, to continue to make billions of dollars, and to prey on children? The only reason is that the companies are already rich, and therefore are able to influence politicians in ways that are favorable to the cigarette companies.
It bothers me that smoking is legal not only because it’s freaking nasty and it kills tens hundreds of thousands of people annually, but also because as public policy it’s so glaringly inconsistent. If drugs like heroin are illegal because they ruin people’s lives by causing them to be severely addicted and/or killing them, then smoking should be illegal for the exact same reasons. The only difference is that there is a powerful political force in support of cigarettes, while there is no such support for the other currently-illegal drugs.
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