The freedom to stink
Last year's movie "Anchorman"
is an absurdist comedy that doesn't even aim for any kind of realism,
but in one respect, the movie is incredibly realistic. Set in the
seventies, its every character smokes everywhere. You rarely see such
realism in movies set in the past.
Since the seventies the War on Smoking has been almost completely won, and only a few mop-up operations remain. The situation is in many ways analogous to War on Socialism in many ways. Of course, the socialist system never had the chance, but the smokers lost their war by making one mistake that the socialist dictators knew they must never make: once you allow people experience the alternative, they will not be coming back but will instead keep demanding more. As soon as the anti-smoking lobby succeeded in making enough places smokefree, their victory became almost predestined. Once the nonsmoking majority personally experienced how much better smokefree places are compared to stinky smoky places, the idea of other places being smokefree too became very natural. And for the smokers, when everybody smokes and smells bad, there is no real stigma in smelling bad, but once you are in the minority, smelling bad tends to be socially stunting.
The Ontario law now totally bans smoking in restaurants. I am so very happy about this, since I can't understand why I ought give smokers any more respect than I would give to people who insisted on constantly farting in public. Actually it would be less, since the harm caused by the fartknockers is purely aesthetic whereas smokers create both aesthetic harm and health risks. To my nose, both are equally unpleasant. As cases go, the case for smoking is about as strong as the case for farting: pretty much the same arguments apply in both.
I recently learned that a similar total smoking ban is being planned in Finland, where the law currently dictates that a part of the restaurant must be smokefree. As stupid laws go, this one is pretty hilarious. As if the cigarette smoke had the good manners to stay on the smoking side, and it's not like the drunken people are generally known for their skill in obeying rules and limitations. (In Finland, the term "restaurant" has a very different meaning than it has in here: it basically means a bar room where the drunken people move around since there are perhaps three people for every actual chair.)
By far the funniest thing about the smoking ban is the reaction of the leftist alternative crowd that believes smoking is "cool" and complains that the government has no right to tell them what they are allowed to do with their bodies. As cognitively dissonant things go, a leftist complaining about the government telling him what he can and can't do with his body must be somewhere near the top. It's not like the leftist would have a problem with the government preventing people voluntarily taking their bodies to shop at Wal-Mart, for example.
While smoking has clearly moved from the mainstream middle-class behaviour to be predominantly loser group behaviour, the hipster trendsetters, the "artists" and the "creative class" still try to keep it alive. This is bad, since the more kids associate smoking with some vague idea of cool "rebellion" and being an "individual", the more they will start smoking and not realize their mistake until it's too late to quit. To combat this, the anti-smoking campaigns should on purpose reinforce the underclass stigma of smoking. For that aim, perhaps smoking ought to be allowed in the underclass dives.
And when I say "underclass", I don't mean Snake with the pack tucked in his sleeve or any other such muscular rebel who make the girls and their panties go all moist, but the obese trailer park losers, the dirty (semi-)homeless begging for money, the mentally ill and the like that no teenager actually wants to emulate once they have seen them in reality. Or the people that you see here going in and coming out of the places that allow smoking: they don't exactly look like any kind of winners or socially high-ranking individuals to me. Such reinforcement would at the same time take care of the hipsters, since for all their posturing, no hipster ever actually wants to be honestly mistaken for even a member of the working class, let alone the underclass.
Since the seventies the War on Smoking has been almost completely won, and only a few mop-up operations remain. The situation is in many ways analogous to War on Socialism in many ways. Of course, the socialist system never had the chance, but the smokers lost their war by making one mistake that the socialist dictators knew they must never make: once you allow people experience the alternative, they will not be coming back but will instead keep demanding more. As soon as the anti-smoking lobby succeeded in making enough places smokefree, their victory became almost predestined. Once the nonsmoking majority personally experienced how much better smokefree places are compared to stinky smoky places, the idea of other places being smokefree too became very natural. And for the smokers, when everybody smokes and smells bad, there is no real stigma in smelling bad, but once you are in the minority, smelling bad tends to be socially stunting.
The Ontario law now totally bans smoking in restaurants. I am so very happy about this, since I can't understand why I ought give smokers any more respect than I would give to people who insisted on constantly farting in public. Actually it would be less, since the harm caused by the fartknockers is purely aesthetic whereas smokers create both aesthetic harm and health risks. To my nose, both are equally unpleasant. As cases go, the case for smoking is about as strong as the case for farting: pretty much the same arguments apply in both.
I recently learned that a similar total smoking ban is being planned in Finland, where the law currently dictates that a part of the restaurant must be smokefree. As stupid laws go, this one is pretty hilarious. As if the cigarette smoke had the good manners to stay on the smoking side, and it's not like the drunken people are generally known for their skill in obeying rules and limitations. (In Finland, the term "restaurant" has a very different meaning than it has in here: it basically means a bar room where the drunken people move around since there are perhaps three people for every actual chair.)
By far the funniest thing about the smoking ban is the reaction of the leftist alternative crowd that believes smoking is "cool" and complains that the government has no right to tell them what they are allowed to do with their bodies. As cognitively dissonant things go, a leftist complaining about the government telling him what he can and can't do with his body must be somewhere near the top. It's not like the leftist would have a problem with the government preventing people voluntarily taking their bodies to shop at Wal-Mart, for example.
While smoking has clearly moved from the mainstream middle-class behaviour to be predominantly loser group behaviour, the hipster trendsetters, the "artists" and the "creative class" still try to keep it alive. This is bad, since the more kids associate smoking with some vague idea of cool "rebellion" and being an "individual", the more they will start smoking and not realize their mistake until it's too late to quit. To combat this, the anti-smoking campaigns should on purpose reinforce the underclass stigma of smoking. For that aim, perhaps smoking ought to be allowed in the underclass dives.
And when I say "underclass", I don't mean Snake with the pack tucked in his sleeve or any other such muscular rebel who make the girls and their panties go all moist, but the obese trailer park losers, the dirty (semi-)homeless begging for money, the mentally ill and the like that no teenager actually wants to emulate once they have seen them in reality. Or the people that you see here going in and coming out of the places that allow smoking: they don't exactly look like any kind of winners or socially high-ranking individuals to me. Such reinforcement would at the same time take care of the hipsters, since for all their posturing, no hipster ever actually wants to be honestly mistaken for even a member of the working class, let alone the underclass.
Like you, I'm a non-smoker, yet I don't feel at all comfortable with these anti-smoking laws. The evidence of second hand smoke's effect on our health is not nearly as convincing as anti-smoking activists would have you believe; but that's not what bothers me honestly. Even the giddy rhetoric about how many people smoking "kills" seems not quite accurate, particularly when it's compared to things such as auto accidents. Is it really accurate to say someone who dies of lung cancer in their sixties because of a lifetime smoking is "killed" in the same way that a person hit by a car is? Smoking, by the way, is estimated to take between four and five years off the life of the average smoker.
It's "nanny state" thinking to be sure and should be resisted on those grounds, yet there is something more sinister here, some eternal, timeless need for people to dictate behavior. In the wake of the sexual revolution there is nowhere for an ambitious prude to go. Cigarette smoking makes a handy target; inherently unhealthy, unpleasant to the non-smoking majority; the product of a massive, old school industry.
Perhaps what's most disconcerting is the certainty that they won't stop at cigarettes; having made their case against cigarettes (at least in the U.S.) largely on the argument that it's a tremendous cost borne by society at large, well, look out alcohol, fatty foods, motorcycles, etc.
The blog Across Difficult Country had a pretty good post on the subject too (you can find him on Steve Sailer's links list as "Carter").
Posted by Dennis Dale | 10:59 PM