Robert Pratt
Why are folk so blind as to what the goal is with the ratcheting up smoking and tobacco bans?
This is the new version of prohibition. But worse, it is the precedent that other people have a right to tell you how to live due to your health or associated costs.
With such a precedent in-place, there is no limit to what can be regulated including sex, diet, sleep, work – you name it, it affects health and healthcare costs. This is extremely dangerous to individual Liberty – possibly the single most dangerous threat we face from within our own society. – Pratt
Massachusetts town weighs nation’s 1st tobacco ban
By AMY CRAWFORD
Associated Press
WESTMINSTER, Mass. (AP) — The cartons of Marlboros, cans of Skoal and packs of Swisher Sweets are hard to miss stacked near the entrance of Vincent’s Country Store, but maybe not for much longer: All tobacco products could become contraband if local health officials get their way.
This sleepy central Massachusetts town of 7,700 has become an improbable battleground in America’s tobacco wars. On Wednesday, the Board of Health will hear public comment on a proposed regulation that could make Westminster the first municipality in the United States to ban sales of all tobacco products within town lines.
“To my knowledge, it would be the first in the nation to enact a total ban,” said Thomas Carr, director of national policy at the American Lung Association. “We commend the town for doing it.”
Leave it to a bunch of yankees to start a deal like this, the next thing they will want is that you must raise your pinkie finger when you sip your tea. But really, I think we have a lot of worse things to worry about, thieves, dopeheads, kidnappers, and crooks of all shapes and sizes come to mind. Wouldn’t it be nice if the tobacco police and the political correctness bunch would help out with these for a while?
Nobody wants a tobacco ban, least the people who work for the public health industry. Insofar I sympathize with the ban. Those people have done silly things in the past and I’d love to see them do someting which is outright mad. It may open the eyes of those who still believe bublic health is about health.
“Public health” is about controlling the spread of contagious disease, not controlling free people and telling them what to do in order to be “healthy” as someone else defines such. And it is ridiculous to state that “nobody wants a tobacco ban” when such is frequently called for.