WE HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO THAN PERSECUTING SMOKERS

John Ed Pearce
Herald-Leader columnist
Lexington KY; March 3, 2002

It is high time that those who believe in individual liberty and the right of every man to be safe from those who insist on saving him from himself and human corporeal weakness, from real, imagined or manufactured sin, to say a word in defense of that most discriminated against, mistreated, ostracized, reviled and assaulted group of Americans in history: cigarette smokers.

What other category of citizens has become, without cause or
justification, the target of so overwhelming an army of self- appointed
saviors, soldiers of purity and unsought salvation?

There is within America a yet-lingering puritanism that, aware of the
sin within its own soul, seeks to achieve holiness through scourging
others' sins. And what more tempting target than the smoker?

Is it not punishment enough for the smoker to have to listen to the
litany of self-glorification from those who have quit smoking, to hear
ad nauseam the recitation of their journey through the suffering of
self-denial to the lofty plains of salvation?  No, he must become the
prey of every health nut, every defender of the pure, every protector of
the young.

Like sharks scenting blood in the water, every hypocrite must strip and
flog the smoker through the media and public square of righteous
opinion.  Every office- holder and politician, hot-eyed and wet-lipped
with the prospect of an easy victim to slice up for tax income, descends
upon him, cloaking his grab for money under the guise of deliverance
from evil.

If they cannot force the smoker to change his nasty ways through
persuasion and shame, they will do it by making his pleasure too costly
to bear-- salvation through poverty.

Only last week the mayor of New York, a smoker who spent $60 million to buy his office and can thus ignore the burden of cost, proposed to raise
the tax on cigarettes by $1.75 a pack, bringing the cost of 20
cigarettes to the vicinity of $7.  The governors of 23 states, unable
and unwilling to levy fair taxes on the wealthy or profit-makers, are
studying similar tricks to squeeze more money from a powerless pack of
people who have no voice, no defender.

Unable or unwilling to free our land of its real sins and shortcomings--
the shame of 40 million children without health care, the racism that
loads upon us hordes of un- or underemployed minorities and crammed
prison cells, the disparity of life standards that produces the hungry
alongside the overfed and fat, the failure to meet the goals of
democracy that leaves us with millions of un- or undereducated children,
an underclass of AIDs victims -- we determine to show our moral courage by stamping out the horrid cigarette.

And in doing so, we reject the idea of basic freedom of decision and the
right to be left alone, even in self-injury, so long as no one else is
injured.  Does it not occur to these belaborers of nicotine that smokers
have as much right to smoke as to drink, drive, engage in sex, eat fatty
foods, bungee jump, parachute from cliffs, gamble at Las Vegas or
indulge in any of dozens of dangerous ventures that may bring them
pleasure?

The government has every right to mount scare campaigns to wean us from smoking and to discourage the young from beginning.  But it has no right to keep us from smoking, by age limits or prohibitive costs.

Furthermore, there is no assurance that smoking is going to kill you or
saddle you with lung cancer.  I am told that more than 400,000 smokers a
year are wafted into eternity via lung cancer.  How many would  have
died without the smoke? How many were willing to run the risk? And how real are the risks when fewer than half a million among the estimated
150 million smokers die of its supposed ravages?

I speak from experience. I smoked for 40 years. I knew it was not good
for me. I finally quit after my doctor warned me that I was teetering on
the verge of emphysema.  It was not easy, as any ex-smoker will glady
tell you. It took me three tries. I was, am, an addict.

But let me add: I smoked of my own free will. No one held me down and
made me start or continue when I knew it was hurting me. I can morally
blame no one but myself, and I have nothing but contempt for people who
insist on smoking through the coughing spells and then sue to be
rewarded for their own weakness of willfullness.

Anyone can smoke; anyone can stop.