This country is really getting stupid!

The BBQ Pit
41

[QUOTE=phouka]
Considering that addiction is an illness, just the same as cholera or schizophrenia, I don’t have a problem with the government addressing it as a public health issue. I just wish they’d spend their time and money researching treatments and cures for addiction, instead of fruitless efforts to change public morality.
[/QUOTE]

Cigarette addiction is not a disease just the same as cholera or schizophrenia. I chose to smoke cigarettes, and chose to quit. My schizophrenic friends were not awarded either of those choices. I’m just guessing here, but I doubt many people have chosen cholera, either.

42

Actually, that article is old. Check the date. Those Camels in the picture have already been banned. I know because I liked them a lot a couple years back, and tried to find them again about a year ago and stumbled upon the fact that they had been eliminated from 30 states or something like that. Color me disappointed.
ETA:
They’re called Exotic Blends in case anyone’s wondering.

43

[QUOTE=pkbites]
You’re mistaking public property with private property. A tavern is private property. The owner should be allowed to dictate what behavior goes on there if the behavior is otherwise legal.

Like I said, You cannot be for limiting someone elses liberty without somewhere down the line your own freedoms being compromised. The next time some law limiting your own free choices is passed, and you don’t like it, somewhere there will be someone who is ecstatic about it.
[/QUOTE]

Yeah, and I have plenty of my freedoms limited that I wish weren’t. However, while living in a society, we need authorities to impose the things that people won’t impose on themselves.

Standing next to someone and farting is being an asshole, but not enough people want to do this to have laws passed about it. Making me smell like an ashtray everytime I want a drink is being an asshole, but plenty of people want to do this, so laws were passed. You’re thinking that the free market will work itself out, that enough people want smokeless bars that owners will see that they are profitable and impose the restrictions themselves. Maybe they would. But the free market can’t correct all problems. And when it’s something that begins to impose itself on other people, sometimes things need to be done.

What if it were addictive to stand on street corners and shout Biblical verses? You better believe there’d eventually be an ordinance in place about where and when you can shout. And that’s the kind of society I want to live in, despite the fact that there are some freedoms that I wish I had. It’s give and take, but it’s better than anarchy.

44

[QUOTE=Paul in Saudi]
When I was passing through London a couple of years ago, there was talk of banning a new form of pre-mixed drinks sold at pubs. (It was easier than mixing them on the spot.) They came in a neat dispenser shaped like a hypodermic needle.

It might encourage drug use amongst those who drink.
[/QUOTE]

You know how energy drinks like Rockstar (made by Coca-Cola) have warnings on the can saying ‘do not mix with alcohol’? Yeah, they sell them at the liquor stores here pre-mixed with vodka. It’s hilarious, you walk into a convenience store and see the tiny warning on the normal can, then take a walk down the block to the liquor store and find the same can except ‘WITH VODKA’ slapped on it in big letters.

45

[QUOTE=pkbites]
What about mouthwash. That’s flavored, and it has alcohol in it.
[/QUOTE]

The stuff I use is flavored and has no alcohol in it. There are at least three different companies selling non-alcohol mouth wash.

46

[QUOTE=BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed]
while living in a society, we need authorities to impose the things that people won’t impose on themselves.

[/QUOTE]

Only weak idiots like yourself see it that way. Go cast a vote to prohibit me from pointing out such a truth.

[QUOTE=Monty]
The stuff I use is flavored and has no alcohol in it. There are at least three different companies selling non-alcohol mouth wash.
[/QUOTE]

Good. That’s called freedom. When it’s the law for such a thing to happen, that’s called fascism. Fascism is what people like BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed jack off to because they can’t think for themselves and/or convince enough people to think like them.

47

So you really are a libertarian? There should be no government involvement in people’s lives in any way beyond laws against murder and theft (I don’t really know the details of the libertarian doctrine, sorry)? What’s to stop me from selling rotting fish on the sidewalk outside your house if I find a market for it? Sorry, but letting people do whatever the fuck they want only works if society isn’t populated by self-centered assholes. I wish society were a lot less conservative, but unless you have a better argument for why you should be able to do things to me that are damaging to my health than that I’m a fascist, you should also be able to explain to me why I shouldn’t be able to fuck you up for it.

They’re both things that are damaging to our health, after all.

48

[QUOTE=pkbites]
Fascism is what people like BellRungBookShut-CandleSnuffed jack off to because they can’t think for themselves and/or convince enough people to think like them.
[/QUOTE]

:dubious: No, sir, or, rather, subhuman piece of shit. Fascism is what George Orwell described in The Lion and the Unicorn: Socialism and the English Genius (1941):

49

[QUOTE=pkbites]
You’re mistaking public property with private property. A tavern is private property. The owner should be allowed to dictate what behavior goes on there if the behavior is otherwise legal.
[/QUOTE]

But the owner isn’t and hasn’t been for a long time. No one can sell liquor without a license. We have tons of worker safety laws (which is what the smoking bans in businesses essentially are) which dictate owner behavior. The government puts limits on liberty all the time. Even in private businesses. Not letting smokers force their drug of choice on others is a reasonable limitation.

And to get back on topic, not letting smokers use their drug of choice because it’s flavored isn’t.

50

:o

51

I thought I posted this earlier, but it never made it out of Word – sorry if things are a bit dated

Weirddave, I could have posted that myself—a while ago. Then I read Kessler’s book, two others whose names I can’t remember, a slew of the tobacco papers (the leaked documents), and a passel of analysis. This took place over the course of a three-week section in law school. I mention this not to give it some sort of authority, but for context. It was as intense an immersion into the topic as possible (albeit only for about three weeks), and I came into it with the libertarian-like sentiments in your post. The class was filled with a GD-like veracity for ripping apart arguments and analysis, questioning everything, and a bunch of demon-like devil’s advocates. In short, imagine fifteen obnoxious law students looking to score points in the class. Oh, another bit of context is that this took place in Washington DC, so lots of us had experience working for/with Federal agencies—Kessler’s book is spot on in terms of the inner workings and machinations that take place at all levels of bureaucracy.

I was also a smoker, and still smoked for about five years afterwards (it’ll be a year in June). So were about five or six others in the class, so damned if we were going to be told in yet another forum “smoking’s bad, m’kay.”

As the unit approached, there was a lot of rolleyes and whatnot, and several heels dug in against the concept/need for government regulation. Then the unit hit us, and on the other side there were a lot of pissed off people.

I certainly can’t encapsulate everything here, so this post isn’t an attempt to do that. I mentioned Kessler’s book because among other things it’s a great summation of just how evil the tobacco companies are. “Evil” may not be the best choice of words, and is clearly hyperbolic, but I honestly can’t think of a better or more apt adjective.

Why evil? Because they weren’t just selling Mainway Toys Bag ‘O Glass. They were also engaging in a vast, multi-front, wide-scale conspiracy to hide and/or crush negative research and stories, distort the legislative process, and to secretly make cigarettes much more addictive than they otherwise would be. Again, I can’t do anything justice here, but the Kessler book (and others) gives great insight as to why the companies weren’t passively trying to sell a product, but were taking active steps to make the product more dangerous, and do they’re best to hide everything they could.

Please don’t take this as patronizing or curmudgeonly or condescending or a whole slew of other adjectives. I know this is the pit and all, and people tend to thrive on injecting and finding insults wherever they can, but I really don’t want to come across as minimizing or marginalizing what you’re saying. I hate banning smoking in public places – those places that would otherwise choose to let you smoke (i.e., bar, restaurant). I likes me my cigarettes (when I have them). But cigarette companies did/do a lot more than just offer their product for sale. They’re an addictive product that takes them out of the realm of “oh, but it’s personal choice.”

[QUOTE=Gadarene]
Which class, Rhythm? I think Heinzerling recommended it one day, which is how I was exposed, but I never took a seminar with her.

Great book.
[/QUOTE]

The class was with Heidi Feldman, named one of those crazy “Bargain, Exchange, and Liability” names. We went from tort to tort topic and read a combination of lay and legal materials. Great class – no other section 3ers from our year, but a few from the next year.

How ya been? Still in DC?

52

[QUOTE=Snarky_Kong]
Replace “addictive drug” with fancy car or unhealthy food or anything that isn’t completely necessary. It’s a complete bullshit question. They should profit because it’s a product that people want and they provide it.
[/QUOTE]

Just like crack dealers! Why do people hate on them?

53

[QUOTE=pkbites]
No it isn’t. While I disagree that addiction is a disease at all, even I’m wrong and it is, it isn’t the same as other diseases.

One doesn’t get cholera via willful misbehavior, and it can’t be overcome via will power.
[/QUOTE]

Chemical addiction alters bodily chemistry so it needs that drug to function properly.

If the drug is removed the body will eventually adapt to it being gone. Meanwhile depending on the addiction the with drawl can have symptoms that’d make the worst flu look like a cake walk.

It has a very real medical side to it, there’s also a learned behavioral side, but to say it’s not a disease at all ignores a great bit about it.

54

[QUOTE=The Tao’s Revenge]
but to say it’s not a disease at all ignores a great bit about it.
[/QUOTE]

As I said, even if I’m wrong and it is a disease, it is still not the same kind of disease as, say, cholera, as phouka likened it too.

55

[QUOTE=pkbites]
As I said, even if I’m wrong and it is a disease, it is still not the same kind of disease as, say, cholera, as phouka likened it too.
[/QUOTE]
Well, cholera isn’t the same kind of disease as cancer, either. So what?

56

I a bit confused about the distinction between addictive and other substances. Are you saying that if a pharmaceutical company developed a synthetic heroin substitute (with all the same addictive properties but just a very little kick) and patented it, they should be free to sell that drug to Coke? (heh) And Coke can put it in their soft drinks without telling anyone, or downplaying/crushing any rumors? That the addictive-ness of a drug should never be regulated?

57

My lawn tractor has a warning label on it to not stick your hands into the area occupied by the moving blade. It even has a little picture of a hand with fingers being lopped off. I’m sure that was government mandated to protect us all from our own curiosity about sharp moving things.

58

[QUOTE=FoieGrasIsEvil]
My lawn tractor has a warning label on it to not stick your hands into the area occupied by the moving blade. It even has a little picture of a hand with fingers being lopped off. I’m sure that was government mandated to protect us all from our own curiosity about sharp moving things.
[/QUOTE]
More likely it was company lawyer-mandated to give them some kind of dodge in a finger-lopping lawsuit.

59

Look, cigarette smoking does harm third parties. While it doesn’t have an intent to harm, it certianly does. Think about all the athmsetics, unable to breate when even walking by a smoker. Think of the children of smokers, much more likely to develop lung cancer through no fault of their own. Even general second hand smoke is suprisingly dangerous, and I can dig up a cite if you really need one. So the argument that it shouldn’t be regulated because ‘I can harm myself if I’m not harming anyone else’ is BS.

Edit: Here. KO yourself

60

[QUOTE=pkbites]
What next? … And pussy. Gotta ban that. Some of those are flavored pretty good.
[/QUOTE]

You must have dated in better circles than me.