Early last month a Florida company banned people from smoking, not just at work, but also in their private lives. Health was the given reason. By the end of the month, the WHO had listed the night shift as being a possible carcinogen. It is also a little known fact that being exposed to light increases the risk of cancer.
The Florida company has not yet moved to ban their employees from using lightbulbs or done away with any night-shifts. They even allow their employees to drive into work though accidents happen all the time and cars emit poison fumes. They’re also a vacation resort so one must assume that people fly to stay with them. Planes are a major source of greenhouse gases.
They have not banned anything that would damage their profit margin.
It’s not surprising. People want to ban the vices they do not have and the things that they do not profit by. Their ability to do so is the exact point where freedom ends. Their desire to do so is often a worse vice than the one they’re trying to eliminate.
Think of prohibition and the war on drugs. Do we really need to expand these losing, idiotic and destructive battles into tobacco? Alcohol did not start being good for people when it was legalized. Pot would be no better or worse for anyone if the ban was lifted. Neither one of these is good for anyone. They don’t need to be. They’re fun.
These anti-smoking campaigners have no concept of fun and no real concern for health. They have a mental disorder. They object to the scent and, I think, to the idea that someone owns their own body and can do what they please with it; no matter what they think. Like the people who want to ban baggy pants, they simply want to force their tastes upon others. They should be free to do this in the privacy of their own homes or businesses. But they should not be allowed to use the law to enforce their prejudices.
No one should. That is not what the law is for.
They know this. They’ve had to turn smokers into murderers and tobacco into a deadly gas no matter how little is consumed. A recent letter in the Toronto Star, written by Judy Myrvold, Chair, Council for a Tobacco-Free Toronto, said: “There is no safe level of second-hand smoke.”
I could be disingenuous and use such a lie to undercut every other claim she makes. But I won’t. I do not think that periodic exposure to second-hand smoke poses any risk and that even extended exposure is just a slight one; probably on par with stepping outside and probably less than being exposed to drunk people. She thinks differently. We could both throw studies at each other. (Often the same ones.) And she could even be right.
But she is very wrong when she says that any amount of what she calls “SHS” –it sounds more medical and dangerous that way– poses a danger. It just doesn’t. So Ms. Myrvold is either ignorant or she is lying. I would like to think that she is ignorant.
But she’s probably lying.
Her group is for a “Tobacco-Free Toronto” and one must ask themselves — What came first: the mission or the claims that support it? I bet it was the mission. And ask yourself this: If a study came across her desk tomorrow that flatly contradicted her, what would she do with it? I think she’d set it on fire.
Even if she is right, which she isn’t, she is not the sort of person who should be making laws but, somehow, she’s the sort of person who always ends up making laws. The bad news is that they never stop. Today it’s smoking and baggy pants, tomorrow it’s the fatty foods we all love, the day after that, it’s the night shift and streetlights.
There’s a safety-related reasons of varying truth to ban anything. Life is not very safe. It will kill you.
So safety cannot be the primary goal of life. We do need, once in a while, to enjoy ourselves, remove the crash helmet and to take stupid risks. We’re human. We like to do stupid shit. We even like to put it up on YouTube when we’re done. All a prohibitionist can ever offer is the possibility of prolonging life and the certainty of making it boring. It’s not a good trade. Accepting it is the stupidest risk we could ever take.
