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Our leaders in Washington recently proposed a new way to discourage tobacco consumption. As it is, regulation is pretty much left to state and local governments, who determine how tobacco will be sold and where it might be consumed.
Salida, for instance, trusts business owners to regulate smoking in their environs. Some restaurants and saloons don't have no-smoking sections, others don't allow smoking at all, many are segregated, and the Victoria Tavern forbids smoking on Friday nights, but allows it on other evenings.
This seems fair enough -- it allows a publican to accommodate public demand, one way or another, and relies upon efficient market forces -- but such common sense escapes the social improvers of Boulder, who have prevailed upon that city's government to, in essence, outlaw all indoor smoking except in private dwellings.
That, too, will become illegal the first time the county social-services department succeeds in convicting some parents of child abuse because they smoked in the same house inhabited by their offspring.
Though we hicks in the provinces often make sport of the excesses of the People's Republic of Boulder, the fact is that Boulder is a leader. Whatever it does -- pedestrian mall, strict development controls -- other Colorado cities try do a few years later. So Boulder's smoking regulations will spread.
It is astonishing that many of the same people who were arguing 25 years ago for the legalization of marijuana now push so hard to outlaw tobacco. Their argument is that public health and safety are improved, but that seems specious.
For instance, years ago I often took the bus to and from Denver when I had errands in the city. The round-trip fare was only $19, cheaper than I could drive. In those days we could smoke in the back of the bus, but the driver couldn't. At every stop, he'd jump out and light up.
Now, when is a passenger safer? When the driver is comfortable because he's got his habit handy, or when he's gritting his teeth and squirming in the seat and racing down the road to the next stop so he can have a smoke?
I don't know about you, but I want that driver watching the road, not lusting for his next fix of nicotine.
That may be why federal bureaucrats, who outlawed smoking on airplanes, still allow smoking in the cockpit. Our regulators don't take plebeian buses, but they do soar with the jet set, and they'd rather face the risks of second-hand smoke than the risks of an edgy flight crew. Bureaucrats know how to look out for themselves, and as for the rabble who ride buses, well, this is Contract America, and if bus passengers were truly concerned about their own safety, they'd make enough money to charter their own jets.
On the federal front in this noble struggle to purify a nation founded by tobacco planters, a new legal theory has been proposed:
Declare that nicotine (one of the most addictive substances known to science) is a drug. This means that it falls under the purview of the Food and Drug Administration, which thus gives the federal government the right to supersede state and local regulations concerning cigarette machines, purchase ages, smoking locales, etc.
An FDA spokesman has called the cigarette a nicotine
delivery system.
That's true, just as a cup of coffee is a caffeine
delivery system,
and a chocolate bar is a
theobromine delivery system.
Many common foods and
beverages contain chemical compounds that are addictive and
psychoactive -- chocoholism
is a fashionable ailment
in some circles, and there are millions of us who enjoy a
caffeine buzz,
miserable addicts who can barely
function in the morning until we've gotten our fix.
It only seems fair that these substances should be restricted like tobacco -- in fact, the equal-protection clause of the constitution might require that we be as protected from chocolate and caffeine as we will be protected from tobacco.
How many Americans die early because they're obese from
eating too much addictive chocolate? How much does American
productivity suffer because workers sip coffee instead of
toiling? And then add in the expensive demands on our
sewage-treatment facilities caused by second-hand
coffee.
A few lawsuits demanding protection should set the federal government on the proper course in this matter. And there are some other ramifications that should be even more interesting.
Now that tobacco is officially defined as an addictive drug, then it follows that tobacco users like me are not merely stupid or self-destructive, but victims. Not only do we suffer the health risks, but we're also pretty much unemployable these days.
So we should qualify for Supplemental Security Income --
we have an affliction that means we can't find work. Or
maybe we'll qualify under the Americans with Disabilities
Act, and businesses will have to make reasonable
accommodations
for us.
However it turns out, thousands of lawyers will be able to retire from the proceeds of this litigation, and that's the real purpose of all regulations, isn't it?
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