Liberty Goes Up in Smoke

by C.J. Carnacchio

On November 19, 1998, tobacco prohibitionists, health-Nazis, liberal do-gooders, and other members of the life-style police will come together to celebrate the Great American Smoke Out. But the Great American Smoke Out is not simply some benevolent attempt to help smokers kick the habit and preserve their health; it is part of the anti-smokers' agenda to limit our freedom of choice and control our lives. This event is not about smokers snuffing out their cigarettes, it is about anti-smokers snuffing out our liberties.

First, let's establish a distinction between non-smokers and anti-smokers. A non-smoker is a person who has chosen not smoke for various personal reasons, but still believes that others have the right to smoke if they choose to do so. They are defenders of the classical liberal principles of tolerance and freedom of choice; "live and let live" is their motto. The non-smokers possess attitudes towards others which nourish a society where the rights and liberties of the individual flourish.

The anti-smoker, in contrast, is a person who does not smoke and believes that no one else has the right to smoke. They are of a totalitarian mindset. The anti-smokers have absolutely no problem imposing their personal values and choices on the rest of society. Their attitudes foster a society where individual liberty is stifled and the tyranny of the majority (or minority) is a constant threat.

The anti-smokers are the self-righteous and self-appointed guardians of public health, sent here to save us poor wretches from ourselves. They won't let little things like the Constitution and individual rights stand in the way of their enlightened ideology. As the British Magazine The Economist observed, "America has taken leave of its senses over smoking ... The intolerance of anti-smoking movement is a greater threat than smoking."

How many personal choices are we willing to surrender to arrogant do-gooders who base their political authority on such rationales as "we know what's best for you" and "it's for your own good"? After smoking has been eliminated, just what will be next? A ban on Big Macs and Ding Dongs? A return to Prohibition and the Gestapo-like tactics of Eliot Ness' Untouchables? Mandatory exercise programs for a nation of couch potatoes? As the sagacious columnist H.L. Mencken once observed, "You know the type as well as I do .... Give him Prohibition, and he launches a new crusade against cigarettes, coffee, jazz, and custard pies."

Some may argue that the crusade against smokers' rights is not a grave threat to the people's liberty in general, but these individuals possess a rather narrow view of freedom. It is the little freedoms, the day-to-day choices about our lives, which are the most essential freedoms to maintain. Without the freedom to exercise these small personal choices, such as choosing to smoke, the liberties we possess in larger affairs, such as voting, become meaningless. As the French political writer Alexis de Tocqueville observed, "It must not be forgotten that it is especially dangerous to enslave men in the minor details of life. For my own part, I should be inclined to think freedom is less necessary in great things than in little ones, if it were possible to be secure of the one without the other."

The anti-smokers have proven that they have no ethical problems with deceiving the American public in order to achieve their objectives. A recent decision by U.S. District Court Judge Osteen invalidated a portion of the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) 1993 report on the respiratory effects of passive smoking. The court found that objective scientific standards were repeatedly violated in the EPA's risk assessment of secondhand smoke. Critical data was manipulated and several important studies which concluded that secondhand smoke led to NO statistically significant increases in the risk of lung cancer were mysteriously excluded. It appears that the EPA researchers had reached their conclusions before the study even began.

Many of the EPA members who conducted the study had anti-smoking biases or were members of anti-smoking organizations. The Science Advisory Board, which examined the EPA study on second-hand smoke, was loaded with anti-smoking activists. Alvin Feinstein, a Yale University epidemiologist, stated that he was told by a prominent epidemiologist that the EPA's secondhand smoke study was "rotten science, but it's for a worthy cause. It will help us get rid of cigarettes and to become a smoke-free society." So much for all that bull we often hear from the scientific community about objectivity and being above politics.

The anti-smoking movement has received aid and an air of legitimacy from the State in their drive for a smoke-free society. Smoking, as a public health issue, has become yet another political Trojan Horse through which the State has been able to camouflage its usurpation of individual liberties. The State's pseudo-concern for citizens' health is just another excuse to raise taxes and further extend its power into the private sphere.

The State has utilized numerous forms of political oppression and discrimination against smokers. One such method is the aggressive taxation of tobacco products (i.e. "sin taxes"). In New Jersey, Governor Christine "Republican-in-name-only"Todd-Whitman recently doubled the wholesale tax on non-cigarette tobacco goods, raising it from 24 percent to 48 percent. When combined with the 6 percent sales tax, New Jersey smokers now pay 54 percent in taxes on their tobacco purchases. A few years ago, Michigan Governor John Engler raised the state tobacco tax to 16 percent in order to help fund education. When did funding education become the responsibility of smokers? Not only are these tobacco taxes burdensome and unjust, they reek of taxation without representation.

In many states, a portion of their staggering tobacco taxes goes directly into funding anti-smoking propaganda campaigns which portray smokers as social lepers and promote discrimination against them. Smokers are, in a sense, helping to pay for their continued persecution. As Thomas Jefferson wrote, "To compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves, is sinful and tyrannical." Another method of oppression employed by the State is the barring of smoking from public establishments. In January 1998, the California state legislature prohibited smoking in all bars and casinos. Instead of letting smoking policies be determined by business owners and the free market, the state government saw fit to trample private property rights and dictate policy. Both Jeffersonian and Lockean political thought agree that the surest way for the State to erode its citizens' liberty is to control their property. The government mandated "No Smoking" signs of California are beacons of intolerance and tyranny.

The State is also using the anti-smoking fervor in this country to trample the economic and political rights of the tobacco industry. When stripped of their political rhetoric, the recent tobacco settlements are nothing more than attempts by both the federal and state governments to extort money from an industry that manufactures and distributes a legal product. The government felt it was not getting enough money through taxes so it felt it had to raise money the old fashioned way - steal it.

What's even worse is that tobacco companies are being coerced into financing groups dedicated to putting them out of business. In Minnesota the anti-smoking organization Minnesota Partnership for Action Against Tobacco will receive $202 million of that state's $6.1 billion tobacco settlement. Imagine if at the height of the Cold War, the United Nations had forced the United States into funding the Soviet Union's nuclear weapons program.

The State has also seen fit to blatantly violate the tobacco industry's First Amendment rights, in the name of public health, by barring it from advertising through certain mediums. If a product is legal to sell, then it should be legal to advertise. It is easy for people to ignore it when the government suppresses the free speech rights of a faceless industry, but what happens when the next one the government tries to silence is you? Smoking has become more than the simple act of enjoying a soothing tobacco product. It has become an act of defiance against the health fascists' political and social tyranny. Smoking has become a badge of honor to the true lover of freedom and a symbol of rugged individualism. Every cigarette, cigar, and pipe out there has become a small torch of freedom with which to fight the darkness of the anti-smokers' despotism. To all you anti-smoking, tyrannical, health-Nazis out there, you can kiss my ash. MR

This article was published in the 18 November 1998 edition of The Michigan Review (Volume 17, Number 4).
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