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Tobacco’s Two Minutes of Hate
I’ve never smoked — and don’t advocate taking up the habit — but I can’t help but find the site of huddled, shivering tobacco aficionados lighting up outside their own homes to be a bit strange. Watching the 1979 classic film Alien the other night, I found its most outrageous moment not to be the hand-to-hand combat with an extraterrestrial that bleeds acid, but the site of the crew enjoying their cigarettes while relaxing on the spaceship. I’m not going to make too many predictions about the 22nd century – one look at some of my recent stock picks is evidence of my disqualification as a forecaster – but I’m willing to wager that it is more likely that xenomorphs will be popping out of our bellies than workers will be allowed to have a smoking break in a hundred years.
How did smokers go from being ubiquitous to becoming societal pariahs within a generation? When I was a kid – I’m old but not that old, having been born in the late seventies, when we still had iron horses for travel, moving pictures for entertainment, and The Star Wars Holiday Special for awkward laughs – I remember candy cigarettes. They took two forms: one a white cylinder hard candy with some red coloring at the end and, the other, cleverer, bubblegum-wrapped version with powdered sugar you could blow out to resemble real smoke. That was just thirty years ago. Can you imagine such a product for kids today? If a ten-year-old were found with candy cigarettes in 2015, family services would pick him up faster than if his parents allowed him to use a plastic swastika as a Frisbee.
Smokers seem to fill this weird niche for the government, both as a tax revenue milk cow and as a villain whipping-boy in ongoing state sponsored research. I enjoy going out to eat without having to get my jacket dry-cleaned afterwards as much as the next guy, but I’m concerned about how quickly tobacco went from being an accepted societal norm to becoming a heavily state-regulated evil vice. It also seems a bit contradictory to me that laws around other drugs are loosening while the rules around tobacco continue to tighten. The militant stigmatization of smokers has an uncomfortable Orwellian quality to it.
Perhaps there is some flaw in human nature that compels us to make once-acceptable personal practices verboten, thinking it is some sick extension of evolution. You may not care about what has happened to smokers over the last two decades since you don’t smoke, know it is an unhealthy practice, and were tired of needing to shower after visiting the local tavern. However, we all have our simple personal vices that help us through the day. It may be a sweet tooth, it could be enjoying a bag of potato chips after a rough day at work, or it might take the form wearing a Klingon mask and leopard skin underwear while watching Star Trek reruns in your parent’s basement. Based on what happened to tobacco, how quickly and easily could any of these practices be made unacceptable next? If, thirty years ago, you had told a smoker partaking in his habit while enjoying an after-dinner drink in his favorite restaurant that — in the not too distant future — he would only be allowed to smoke while freezing outside the restaurant with passersby using their coats to cover their scornful faces in an attempt to avoid his exhaled toxins, do you think he’d have believed you?
Published in Culture
And now I will share this story, which clearly illustrates that I think others share my inappropriate sense of humor, despite of lifetime of evidence otherwise.
My mother was in the ER of our local hospital. For the sake of brevity, just know that she had fallen, fractured both patella, and was back after falling again.
So, I’m in the ER with her, waiting for them to discharge us. I had sent my sister home, and I am bitter and grouchy and trying to cover it up. Anyway, my mother is talking about how hard she is making our lives (true!) and then she apologizes for making our lives so stressful…
What transpired:
PsychLynne: It’s ok, mom. It’s taken care of now, we’ve got crutches, we’ll see ortho tomorrow.
Mom: Yes, but I’ve just caused so much stress for you and your sister.
What I should have said:
PsychLynne – Proper Answer selections could have included noncommittal noises (mmm), head nodding, a hug, a well-timed tear, an “I’m just glad you’re here with us.” Even, “times like this we all miss Daddy” would have been ok.
What I did say:
PsychLynne – You know, mom, in times of stress, we sometimes do things that seem out of character (reaching down in my purse), so I think I’m just going to (pulling out the aforementioned bubblegum cigarette with sugar smoke and puffing it) take a minute and relax.
She almost jumped out of the bed, her heart monitor went off…and the nursing staff came rushing in.
Oops.
She still won’t talk about it. I’d like to blame it on being 20…or drunk, or something, but I was in my early 40s and sober.
I’m still a fan of the bubblegum cig though.
Man I miss those.
This reminded me of Mrs. O’Shea’s grandfather. He enjoyed cigarettes, cigars, pipes and chewing tobacco. I don’t have a picture of this man without one of these in his hands. I don’t have any memory of him not smoking or chewing until he was admitted into a nursing home at 93. He passed away at 96.
They sell them on Amazon.
Repositioning smoking from a normal adult activity to a neurosis of sorts is one of the most significant public health victories in the last few decades. High taxes have helped reduce cigarette availability to kids and that’s also a big part of the health gain. Most people don’t take up smoking in their 20s or 30s.
It has gotten to the point at which tobacco companies are essentially tax collectors. About 75% of the cost of cigarettes goes to various levels of government. Given the health benefits of reduced consumption, my biggest complaint is that those taxes are not spent efficiently or wisely.
See the sci-fi novel Blindsight by Peter Watts which imagines a future where cancer is so easily cured that smoking comes back with a vengeance.
The left in 2015: Legalize pot!
The left one year after marijuana is legalized: Big Cannabis is trying to kill us!
A friend’s elderly mother has told me more than once that if she opens the newspaper one morning and finds out smoking risks are gone, she’d be at 7-11 buying a pack while still dressed in her nightgown.
I place regular orders : )
I have a crazy friend on Facebook who think Putin is great, and he thinks that the tensions in Ukraine are all about Monsanto trying to stop people from raising non-GMO crops, or something like that.
I don’t cotton to the stigmatization of smokers either but from a public policy standpoint smoking causes a real and measurable externality: smoke. So in that sense it is reasonable and prudent that where smoking is allowed be subject to regulation. And most of the public bannings are private businesses deciding that they don’t want it. Again, an entirely defensible position…especially if you think you adhere to conservative values.
How? (a) It’s most definitely not healthy, (b) it annoys and probably harms non-smokers (smokers became a persecuted minority), (c) supposedly adds to the cost of medical care (though I admit this is dubuious under scrutney since smokers tend to die younger and quicker), (d) people feared their children would become addicted, and (e) government saw it as a source of revenue since they labled it a vice.
I don’t support the high taxes on cigarettes. I’d rather they just banned it outright as a control substance. There’s nothing positive about cigarettes and a whole lot of negative.
That, ladies and gentlemen, is some high-test crazy. That reminds me of a barely-remembered old James Coburn movie where the whole world was secretly run by the phone company (back when there was just one phone company).
Tobacco has long been under fire. A quick review of Marc Linder’s massive work: “Inherently Bad, and Bad Only”: A History of State-Level Regulation of Cigarettes and Smoking in the United States Since the 1880s. at the University of Iowa School of Law will reveal that. http://ir.uiowa.edu/books/2/ Just take a look at some of the illustrations from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth. There have been bans of all sorts including sales bans. Remember, this is the country that brought you prohibition. The earlier attacks were only partially based on health. Morality was the primary driver. Now we have the banner of [unlimited] public health to rally under, although morality is still a major factor. Part of the march towards a Progressive and joyous future, America! Forward!
I don’t mind business banning smoking on their premises. What I do mind is the infringement on property rights and states dictating to businesses that they can’t have smoke. It reached absurd levels in Ohio when the smoking ban took effect and no one thought to consider whether it would apply to hookah bars and cigar lounges.
Not in Illinois. A bar or restaurant has no choice in whether it wants to allow smoking. Not even private clubs, such as country clubs, are allowed to have smoking inside their buildings.
I would be VERY HAPPY to allow individual businesses to decide whether they want to allow smoking in their businesses. What I detest is the government deciding there is only one option allowed either way.
The situation in Illinois is NOT a defensible position if you adhere to conservative values.
UPDATE: According to the Wikipedia page, 28 states have enacted total bans on smoking in all enclosed public places, including all bars and restaurants, so I’m not sure why you say “most” of the bans are private decisions. Given the populations of the 28 states, it seems far less than half of the business in the country have any choice in the matter at all.