Anti-tobacco fascism threatens all
by Glenn Caleval
The newest front in the war on personal liberty has been opened by the anti- smoking lobby. They have announced their intention to have smoking outdoors made illegal. To go even further they are also calling for smoking to be banned in private residences. They are already employing the same tools of deception and manipulation used to gain restrictions in bars and clubs without any alternatives allowed for consideration.
Note that I am not particularly opposed to restricting smoking. I am opposed to lying about it, prostituting science instead of being up front and honest about the real purpose. The only purpose that is served by many of the laws being proposed or already implemented is to try to force existing smokers to quit and to further alienate smokers from society to discourage others from taking up the habit. The purpose is no long as claimed to protect nonsmokers from the draconian dangers of second hand smoke. And it is there that I am offended. So weak is the confidence of the proponents of these laws, in the willingness of the majority to impose laws that do not in fact protect them from anything, that lying and distorting science are necessary to win their case.
The nonsensical claim is being made that second hand smoke outdoors is as dangerous as it is indoors. More absurd the claim is that even a random molecule that might travel from one condo to the next is dangerous.
If the collaborators in the medical community produce "evidence" that this is true, then it will be logically necessary to ban standing at bus stops, since the fumes from a bus are many times greater than the fumes from a cigarette.
The fact is that cigarette smoke is not a “thing.” It is composed of many ingredients. To claim that there is no safe level of exposure to cigarette smoke is to claim there is no safe level of exposure to one or more of these ingredients. To be credible professionals who endorse the no-safe-level claim must identify exactly which of these ingredients fall into this ultra-dangerous category and then work to have them eradicated from all human environments, including manufacturing. But they will do no such thing because they know the science does not support their claim. There is a safe level of exposure to almost everything – or at least a level that is as safe as thousands of other substances which are common. But these advocates are not intellectually honest.
The same doctors and researchers who proclaim there is no safe level of exposure know full well that a person’s risk of developing lung cancer is measured in pack-years. The number of packs smoked per day times the number of days in the year smoked times the number of years of smoking at that rate. To have any meaningful impact it has to be argued that person passing by a smoker in the park, even daily, will accumulate even a single pack year of exposure. Even more to the point, they would have to argue that this vulnerable walker is being exposed to more danger than by walking past cars, or under flying airplanes or near dogs. Because if the level of danger in outdoor second smoke is lower than the danger from a thousand other activities, then either they have to say those other activities must be curtailed or acknowledge that the danger level is so low as to be negligible.
But they do not care what the actual science says. It is much easier to mislead the public and engender fear, often deep fear resulting in genuine psychological stress. Why is it the easy route? Because most people really don’t feel morally justified in reducing other peoples’ right to make their own choices unless those choices have real consequences for others. If most people realized that outdoor second hand smoke had no reasonable chance of affecting anyone else, they become much harder to convince of the need to further persecute smokers.
So the prohibitionists lie. They distort. They mislead.
Let's be clear about who these people are and what they are. They are petty demons of tyranny, infected with fascistic delusions of moral superiority. Christ himself would not impose his way by force, but these are society's spot cancers, enraptured with their own infallibility and therefore blindly committed to any act of power to coerce the unenlightened to bring their lives in line with the righteous choices the demons make on behalf of all.
They are the heirs of Goebbels, ends-justifies-the-means masters of deception, distortion and social oppression.
And they are powerful. They are powerful because governments lend them power and the population has been beaten into camps of righteous fascists, collaborators and MIAs.
The righteous fascists is that committed minority of the population that has received various divine revelations about what is good for everyone. They have come down from the mountain with the tablet of instructions that you are to follow for your own good and if you do not want to do it voluntarily they have no choice but to use force against you to force you to do this thing because it is, after all, for your best interests.
Among the righteous fascists are a particularly virulent tribe of demigods. These are the doctors and scientists who know that the "science" they produce or propagate is not sound, but have abandoned the principles of science and logic in favour of virtuous mental masturbation. They put themselves in petty states of ecstasy by feeling the greater good they are doing through their saintly manipulation of the public mind. They see themselves as modern heroes, conscripting deceit and diversion to the cause.
The collaborators are those whose liberty is being curtailed, but who voice agreement or understanding of the need for the forcible deprivation. Some are genuinely convinced that they do not have the personal character to exercise free choices and so welcome the jackboot of state enforcers to make the choices for them.
By far the greatest camp is composed of those missing in action, the check- skippers, those comfortable in the delusion that "it doesn't affect me." The majority of non-smokers do not care whether or not smokers are allowed to poison themselves on patios. But because they do not care, they do not object when force is used to stop smoking on patios. Those who do not care also can understand that there is "something wrong" with the argument that second hand smoke on a patio is so dangerous that it must be outlawed but running cars in enclosed parkades is okay. They know there is some kind of manipulation going on, but it "does affect me."
They have not got the message of Martin Niemöller, "First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out- because I was not a communist...then they came for me..."
It is depressing to know that a search on the phrase "First they came for..." will yield over 200,000 web pages on Google. Yet with all the invoking of the lesson, we seem not to have learned it. Among those missing in action are groups who themselves have tried to adopt the lesson (for example, "First they came for the gays") yet only see its merit in so far as it affects them. They only seem to care when “they come for me.”
If this kind of totalitarian democracy can be practiced to the extent of banning legal activities in people’s own homes, it will not be long until they come for you.
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