Nanny State Closes In
That cigarette you bummed from a friend at last year’s Christmas party? It could kill you. The vicarious pleasure that is prompted by even a whiff of someone else’s smoke while walking down a sidewalk? It could be damaging your DNA. So says the Surgeon General.
At least 39 countries require awful pictures on cigarette packs. Brazil has the worst. Our own FDA has selected 36 candidates for Americans.
What else is there to say? Smoking is: Bad. Bad. Bad.
Unless it’s marijuana.
When I started my first professional job as an accountant in 1986, my co-workers could smoke at their desks (at a hospital no less). Our departmental receptionist occasionally smoked Indonesian clove cigarettes at the front desk. Now clove cigarettes are illegal and people have to congregate outside no less than 15 feet from an entrance if they smoke.
I think the overrated perils of second-hand smoke are far outweighed by the filth and griminess of tobacco products, from snuff and chaw, to cigarettes, cigars and pipes. The Russians have a great word for what this is, groznij. Loosely translated, it means grimy. But I’m a reformed smoker too.
Devon: Good. If you want to kill yourself, do it by yourself. Big Tobacco’s position is indefensible.
Here’s another funny one.
I am no expert on this, but it seems like passing out free cigarettes to baby boomers could be a good solution to our Social Security bankruptcy problem.
The irony of banning cigarettes while legalizing marijuana seems paradoxical.
Yes cigarettes are bad. Worse is the FDA policy of refusing to approve cigarette substitutes that would reduce smokers’ risk.