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SMOKING AND CIVIL RIGHTSby Linda StewartAfter banning smoking in all public housing in St. Lucie, County, Florida ( by bureaucratic fiat) Housing Commissioner Richard Sneed made his case to a local paper: "There is no constitutional right to be allowed to smoke." 1 Mr. Sneed missed the point. The last time we looked, the point of the constitution was to protect the individual from unwarranted intrusions into his life by the state--let alone by petty bureaucrats who walk around whistling l'etat cest moi. The anti-smokers, of course, would prefer to frame the question tn terms of verbs instead of nouns, wherein "smoking" (not "smokers") can be blithely denied rights. (This, too, is a slippery slope. Eating meat, wearing perfume, and drinking liquor are also verbs, and Mr. Sneed might presumably "allow--or disallow--these prerogatives to his tenants.) Smoking, however, is another class thing. "The title of smoker," to quote Chistopher Hitchens, is defined as simultaneously a noun and a verb, "denot[ing] something you are, as well as something you do."2 So when the law bans the verb it essentially bans the noun. And to argue any differently is sophistry at its height. The question--no matter how it's fiddled with--remains: Do American citizens who smoke have civil rights? And the answer increasingly appears to be: No. In the course of the last decade--and often under the rubric of "Nonsmokers' Rights"--smokers, as a class, have been banished from public life and systematically deprived of a series of basic rights (as enumerated here). The result is that first-class American citizens, who used to be considered as equal before the law, are no longer even entitled to be "separate but equal," they're simply not entitled--to anything at all. In a putative democracy, our government, in print, is now boasting that Americans who smoke are "second class," in fact "second-class citizens."3 In fact, this boast is true. On a practical level, there is simply no reason for the ban on American smokers. The "Public Health" argument, deployed by the EPA, is unconscionably flawed4 and distressingly familiar. Public Health as a rationale for legislation and segregation has a long and dishonorable record. Till the end of the 1950's, the identical kinds of arguments--the "menace to public health"--supported racial discrimination. It was widely accepted and officially tossed around that if a black person and a white person drank for the same fountain, rested in the same rest room, or ate from the same plate--even though the plate had been washed in between--poor whitey would catch his death. In the course of our history, the banner of Public Health--"statistically proven" and trumpeted by the press--has been used to discriminate--also to legislate--against the Chinese, the Italians, the Irish and the Jews...who've been fingered as the "causes" of polio, cholera, TB and bubonic plague.5 This is simply an old hustle with a new and malignant twist. While historically, a ghettoized people retained its rights within the confines of the ghetto, any ghetto designed for smokers is considered against the law. In other words, the law forbids a smoking car on a train, or any smokers-only restaurants, or movie theatres, or flights. (And by what rational standards can the law prohibit smokers form enjoying a public park?) But these insanties in themselves haven't risen out of a vacuum. They're the natural-born spawn of an onslaught of propaganda---the most egregious, sensationalized attack by any government on a group of its own people since Goering invented hate as a tool of communication. Fifty million smokers are apparently the eggs to be broken to make the omelet of a health-obsessed society. By fair means or foul. And the means (meant to justify the ends here) are foul: Junk Science. Big lies. And the ancient, discredited and desperate black art that makes circuses out of a scapegoat. This is dangerous business. Intolerance, uncorked you will find, is very difficult to lure back into the bottle; and unfortunately humans, as a lot, love to hate, to be told they're "superior," and to kick each other around.6 This will not be the first or the last time in history that hysteria will rule the day. But that a democratic government is sponsoring this hysteria makes the day inescapably and frighteningly sad. What follows is a partial list of lost civil rights. (Click on to see each subject) THE UNABRIDGED RIGHT TO PEACEABLY ASSEMBLE THE RIGHT TO WORK--AND THE RIGHT TO WORK EFFICIENTLY THE RIGHT TO HAVE EQUAL ACCESS TO HOUSING AND OTHER ACCOMMODATIONS THE RIGHT TO PURSUE HAPPINESS ON PRIVATE PROPERTY SO YOU THINK THE ANTI'S WILL STOP WITH SMOKING? ADDENDUM - Here are a few stories pertaining to the absurdities that the anti-smoking movement causes. If you have any stories like these, we invite you to send them in to us. This list is only a partial list and it doesn't get to the heart of what's been happening in America -- not only to smokers, but the country as a whole. A hatred has been manufactured, a bigotry set in place that has ruptured a lot of families and demolished a lot of friendships. Start talking to smokers and it may start to surprise you how often this is true; and how alienated, angry and depressed smokers are, and how perpetually startled at the constant barrage of venom. In the Boston Phoenix, in the May 6, 1994 issue, an editorialist made a link. "Not long ago," he said, "this nation forbad another group, just as large, from gathering together in publicly licensed restaurants and bars...", and the result was a riot, the Stonewall riot. "Is this," he continues, "what the crusade against smokers will eventually come to? The creation of 'smoke-easies' to shelter poor smokers from the elements and the hatred of their fellow citizens? Will smokers be pushed so far outside that the only way to assert their dignity will be to riot against their sanctimonious oppressors?" Discussing this issue at a Cato Institute seminar in 1994, senior editor, Sheldon Richman, concluded with this thought: "Ladies and gentlemen, liberty is under assault. I amnot a cigarette smoker. Most people are not smokers. But it is perilous for us to ignore this assault merely because it is aimed at someone else. Let's not have to say years from now, when they came for smokers, I didn't speak out because I wasn't a smoker--you know how the rest goes. How long before something YOU do is singled out by the health fascists? The cigarette may or may not be an unfortunate symbol of today's struggle for freedom in the United States of America. It doesn't matter. Like it or not, the enemies of liberty have made it so. So those of us who value liberty...must now rally behind it." Linda Stewart Printed with permission from author. (1) "Smoking Banned in Public Housing" St.
Petersburg Times 2/10/96; Pt. St. Lucie News 3/22/96. |
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