Comments
by Scoper...
Cigs and Psych
I smoke, therefore I'm a
victim. Not of the cigarette companies, but possibly of my own bad judgment,
and certainly of the people who, for whatever reason, just can't stand
it if they can't tell other people how to live. And you know who you are.
Hey, it's kinda neat, this "victim status." Maybe I should have jumped
on that whiny bandwagon earlier.
Most everybody knows what
a jury in Miami decided recently: that cigarette-makers are guilty of distributing
a deadly product, and should pony up 145 billion dollars as punishment.
Ignore for a moment that 145 billion is more than the gross domestic product
of many countries, that it's almost twice as much as the stock value of
the companies expected to pay it, and that Florida law does not allow for
an award so big it would destroy a de facto legal industry. It'll be in
the courts for a couple more years, at least.
If you agree with what happened
in Miami, nothing I write here will change your mind. But I'll state this
for the record: the plaintiffs in that case have NO MORAL CLAIM to damages,
and their legal claim exists only through a perversion of the system. The
greatest civil award in world history is based on the greatest non sequitur
in world history. It's a mindset I'm still struggling to understand.
How can anyone, intelligent
enough to dress himself and not make messes in the house, NOT KNOW that
cigarettes are a health risk, and that once you start, it can be hard to
stop? Unless you started before the mid-1960's, you DID KNOW, yet you think
it's good and right that someone else be held responsible. That leaves
me with another question: what do you see when you look in the mirror?
As I mentioned in an earlier
essay, you don't sue a company, you sue its customers. So who ends up being
punished here? Other smokers. Wait, I thought smokers were the victims
here! Hmm. Maybe they'll all quit when the price gets too high. Fat chance.
Here's another truism: you
can't ban anything, you can only push it underground. There's already a
smuggler's market for cigarettes; the next step is a full-fledged black
market. Now we're talking violent crime, gang turf wars, and all the other
ugliness that goes along with trying to save people from themselves. You
may think I'm exaggerating, but there are no good scenarios here.
And it gets even crazier.
State and federal governments have been taxing cigarettes so much, and
for so long, that they've painted themselves into a corner. They need that
money; they count on that money. It builds roads, it funds entitlement
programs, it does a lot of things politicians know they won't be re-elected
without. Losing that revenue suddenly would be a budgetary nightmare. At
the same time, governments will be forced to spend more for "cigarette
police," as more people are criminalized who weren't criminals before.
But really, the most disturbing
part is this. There's no end to it! Now there's a court precedent that
says even if you willingly partake in something that's "bad for you," someone
else is to blame. Whether or not the cigarette award survives appeal, the
stage is set. Fast-food joints "overserved" you, so sue them for your obesity
and high cholesterol. You can't quit getting drunk, you lost your driver's
license and your wife and kids left you. Sue the brewers and distillers.
Maybe you're a teetotaler
and a vegetarian. Good for you, but you're still affected, or will be,
because the "pleasure police," or "lifestyle Nazis," or "nannies" or whatever
some might choose to call them WILL NEVER STOP. They'll keep moving from
"righteous cause" to "righteous cause," eventually targeting something
that YOU like, and by then, there'll be no one to defend you.
That's the "psych" part of
this essay title, and since I'm not a shrink, I have no answer. I only
know what is: a faction that derives its own happiness from controlling
others. They're making war against your right to choose for yourself, and
the rest of us are giving them the ammunition!
Think I'm full of it? Come
back in five years and tell me that. Meantime, consider the words of New
York Times columnist Paul Krugman: "Beware the cause of a rebel without
a life."
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