NO SMOKING
Ayn Rand > Quotes
Ayn Rand quotes
“I like to think of fire held in a man's hand.
Fire, a dangerous force, tamed at his fingertips. I often wonder about the
hours when a man sits alone, watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I
wonder what great things have come from such hours. When a man thinks, there is
a spot of fire alive in his mind--and it is proper that he should have the
burning point of a cigarette as his one expression.”
ANTI-SMOKING PATERNALISM: A CANCER ON AMERICAN
LIBERTY
by Don
Watkins | March 06, 2010
Newport
Beach is considering banning smoking in a variety of new places, potentially including
parks and outdoor dining areas. This is just the latest step in a widespread
war on smoking by federal, state, and local governments — a campaign that
includes massive taxes on cigarettes, advertising bans, and endless lawsuits
against tobacco companies. This war is infecting America with a political
disease far worse than any health risk caused by smoking; it is destroying our
freedom to make our own judgments and choices.
According
to the anti-smoking movement, restricting people’s freedom to smoke is
justified by the necessity of combating the “epidemic” of smoking-related
disease and death. Cigarettes, we are told, kill hundreds of thousands each
year, and expose countless millions to secondhand smoke. Smoking, the
anti-smoking movement says, in effect, is a plague, whose ravages can only be
combated through drastic government action.
But
smoking is not some infectious disease that must be quarantined and destroyed
by the government. It’s a voluntary activity that every individual is free to
abstain from (including by avoiding restaurants and other private
establishments that permit smoking). And, contrary to those who regard any
smoking as irrational on its face, cigarettes are a potential value that each
individual must assess for himself. Of course, smoking can be harmful — in
certain quantities, over a certain period of time, it can be habit forming and
lead to disease or death. But many understandably regard the risks as minimal
if one smokes relatively infrequently, and they see smoking as offering
definite value, such as physical pleasure.
Are
they right? Can it be a value to smoke cigarettes — and if so, in what
quantity? This is the sort of judgment that properly belongs to every
individual, based on his assessment of the evidence concerning smoking’s
benefits and risks, and taking into account his particular circumstances (age,
family history, etc.). If others believe the smoker is making a mistake, they
are free to try to persuade him of their viewpoint. But they should not be free
to dictate his decision, any more than they should be able to dictate his
decision on whether and to what extent to drink alcohol or play poker. The fact
that some individuals will smoke themselves into an early grave is no more
justification for banning smoking than that the existence of alcoholics is
grounds for prohibiting you from enjoying a drink at dinner.
Implicit
in the war on smoking, however, is the view that the government must dictate
the individual’s decisions with regard to smoking, because he is incapable of
making them rationally. To the extent the anti-smoking movement succeeds in
wielding the power of government coercion to impose on Americans its blanket
opposition to smoking, it is entrenching paternalism: the view that individuals
are incompetent to run their own lives, and thus require a nanny-state to
control every aspect of those lives.
This
state is well on its way: from trans-fat bans to bicycle helmet laws to
prohibitions on gambling, the government is increasingly abridging our freedom
on the grounds that we are not competent to make rational decisions in these
areas — just as it has long done by paternalistically dictating how we plan for
retirement (Social Security) or what medicines we may take (the FDA).
Indeed,
one of the main arguments used to bolster the anti-smoking agenda is the claim
that smokers impose “social costs” on non-smokers, such as smoking-related
medical expenses — an argument that perversely uses an injustice created by
paternalism to support its expansion. The only reason non-smokers today are
forced to foot the medical bills of smokers is that our government has
virtually taken over the field of medicine, in order to relieve us inept
Americans of the freedom to manage our own health care, and bear the costs of
our own choices.
But
contrary to paternalism, we are not congenitally irrational misfits. We are
thinking beings for whom it is both possible and necessary to rationally judge
which courses of action will serve our interests. The consequences of ignoring
this fact range from denying us legitimate pleasures to literally killing us:
from the healthy 26-year-old unable to enjoy a trans-fatty food to the
75-year-old man unable to take an unapproved, experimental drug without which
he will certainly die.
By
employing government coercion to deprive us of the freedom to judge for
ourselves what we inhale or consume, the anti-smoking movement has become an
enemy, not an ally, in the quest for health and happiness.
Ellsworth Toohey, the
chief villain in The Fountainhead, on the imperative of sacrificing one’s vales
tor the “higher good.” The FountainheadAnti-Smoking
Essay.docx (pp. 301-314,
Toohey’s academic and journalism career. Chapter 9, Part 2) throughout the novel Toohey is the
articulate essence of a power-luster whose unchanging goal is to destroy the
good for being the good.
“A man braver than his brothers insults them
by implication. Let us aspire to no virtue which cannot be shared.”…”We are all
brothers under the skin –and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to
prove it.”….”Everything that proceeds from the ego is evil; everything that
proceeds from love for others is good.”…”Service is the only badge of
nobility.”
A great many philanthropic undertakings and radical
publications, run by all sorts of people, had a single connecting link among
them, one common denominator: the name of Ellsworth M. Toohey on their
stationery. He was a sort of one-man holding company of altruism.…..
(Toohey) in his
university career, was considered outstanding as a vocational adviser.
Some of his advice. He seldom let a boy pursue the career he had
chosen.
“No, I wouldn’t go in for law if I were you. You’re much too
tense and passionate about It. A hysterical devotion to one’s career does not make
for happiness or success…” “No, I
wouldn’t advise you to continue with your music. That’s just the trouble—that
you love it…Yes, give it up, Yes, even if it hurts like hell.”…”The question of
where you could be the most useful to your fellowmen comes first….And where
opportunities for service are concerned, there’s no endeavor comparable to that
of a surgeon. Think it over.”
Of all the many titles bestowed upon him, he preferred one:
Ellsworth Toohey, the Humanitarian.
As he is portrayed in words and actions in the
novel, Ellsworth Toohey is the brain brother and soul mate of most of the
dictators in history. Many of these figures also professed to be humanitarians
– champions of the Race, of the people, of any collective idea or movement
“higher” than the individual, posing as vehicles of salvation. His purpose was
to exact universal obedience, conformity in thought, and in thoughtless,
knee-jerk agreement with the imperative of crushing the exceptional and individual freedom and choice. Toohey sought
to reduce the tall mountains of individualism to a monotonous, unending expanse
of sand, undisturbed by the least wind of choice and independent thought.
The first prominent anti-smoker was English King James.
KING JAMES I, A COUNTERBLASTE TO TOBACCO, 1604
Context
This document is the first
page of a treatise that was first issued by King James I (1566–1625) in 1604
and later received a new printing in 1674. He was the King of Great Britain
from 1603 until his death in 1625. The first English ruler from the House of
Stuart, he succeeded Queen Elizabeth I after her death, and was the first
British monarch to rule both England and Scotland. In this treatise King James
I gives various reasons for his strong dislike of tobacco, each of which is
meant to counteract several then common reasons for tobacco usage.
Europeans had been exposed to tobacco as early as 1560 and used it primarily as medicine. In the following decades, tobacco use among Europeans increased, not only for medicinal use but also for recreation. For many rulers in Europe, including King James I, tobacco smoking represented a major social and health problem. English leaders did not make the sale and smoking of tobacco illegal, although many other European countries did. Instead, King James I
Europeans had been exposed to tobacco as early as 1560 and used it primarily as medicine. In the following decades, tobacco use among Europeans increased, not only for medicinal use but also for recreation. For many rulers in Europe, including King James I, tobacco smoking represented a major social and health problem. English leaders did not make the sale and smoking of tobacco illegal, although many other European countries did. Instead, King James I
tried hard to reduce
tobacco usage, even instituting a 4,000 percent tax hike on tobacco in 1604.
The price increase, however, did little to reduce English demand for the
“noxious weed.”
The attitude of the king and members of England's
ruling classes changed when tobacco became a cash crop for its colonies. During
the early years of English exploration and settlement of North America, only a
small amount of tobacco was cultivated and exported. For that reason, in 1604,
when King James issued this statement, the main suppliers of tobacco to the
English were foreign shippers. Not until the 1620s did the English colonies of
Virginia and Maryland began to grow and export large quantities. Accepting the
inevitable King James decided the Crown might as well cash in on the popularity
of tobacco and the state took control of the industry. Ironically, tobacco
cultivation would lay the foundation for the success of England's American
colonies.
Of course, we
know that government anti-smoking powers have emulated King James and his
elitist allies over the centuries by not only frowning on tobacco and smoking
and discouraging them, but decided to impose taxes and controls on the
“noxious” leaf and its use world over because it could not be stamped out, and
collect revenue on its growing use and sale, as the U.S. government, state, and
local governments do now. One cannot enter a pool hall or a bar or a restaurant
anymore, without encountering “No Smoking” signs. Not exactly welcoming the
likes of Minnesota Fats,
.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Wikipedia
has an informative entry on the anti-smoking campaign from its early
beginnings.
Anti-Cigarette League of
America
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Anti-Cigarette
League of America was an anti-smoking advocacy group which had substantial success in the anti-smoking movement
in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the United States in passing
anti-smoking legislation. The campaign sought to pass smoking bans in public places as well as ban cigarettes themselves.
History
The group was founded in 1899
by Lucy Page
Gaston, a
teacher, writer, lecturer and member of the Woman's
Christian Temperance Union.
Gaston maintained that cigarette smoking was a "dangerous new habit,
particularly threatening to the young and thus likely to lead to the use of
alcohol and narcotics, so prevalent in the 1890s." Gaston's mission
attracted the attention and the patronage of like-minded progressives and
members of the WCTU. By 1901 the organization claimed a membership of 300,000,
with a paid staff overseeing chapters throughout the United States and Canada.[1]
Between 1890 and 1930, 15
states enacted laws banning the sale, manufacture, possession, or use of
cigarettes, and 22 other states considered such legislation.[2]
Even the legislature of the
tobacco-producing state of North Carolina considered cigarette prohibition laws
in 1897, 1901, 1903, 1905, 1911, 1913, and again in 1917.
Eventually,
all the states repealed their cigarette prohibition laws and associated smoking
bans in most public places. Kansas was the last to do so, in 1927
The anti-smoking
campaign in America from its beginning in the 19th Century was
compatible with the growth of Progressivism in the U.S, that is, with the rise
of political clamoring for more controls and the regulation of private choices
and behavior. One of my favorite short independent films is “Regulation.”.
In a not too-far-fetched
plot (not too far from the Democrats’ progressive designs on Americans), a
social worker from the Department of Health and Human Services appears to
attach a “happy patch” or a micro doser to a young girl in conformance with a
law that guarantees that every child has a “right” to be happy, “by law.”. The
girl offers the social worker an unanswerable argument about why she does not
want a “happy patch.” Unable to counter the girl’s argument, the social worker
resorts deception and reports the girl’s non-compliance.
There are dozens of articles on the anti-smoking and
anti-secondhand smoke issues.
We can’t overlook the Nazi contribution to the campaign.
Hitler was a notorious non- and anti-smoker. Had he won WWI he likely would
have banned smoking not only in Germany
but in all his conquered countries.
Nuremberg
The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazis: a little known aspect of
public health in Germany, 1933–45
BMJ 1996; 313 doi: https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.313.7070.1450 (Published
07 December 1996)Cite this as: BMJ 1996;313:1450
1.
Robert
N Proctor,
professor of the history
·
Accepted 6 November 1996
Historians and epidemiologists have only recently begun to
explore the Nazi anti-tobacco movement. Germany had the world's strongest
antismoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, encompassing bans on smoking
in public spaces, bans on advertising, restrictions on tobacco rations for
women, and the world's most refined tobacco epidemiology, linking tobacco use
with the already evident epidemic of lung cancer. The anti-tobacco campaign
must be understood against the backdrop of the Nazi quest for racial and bodily
purity, which also motivated many other public health efforts of the era.
Medical historians in recent
years have done a great deal to enlarge our understanding of medicine and
public health in Nazi Germany. We know that about half of all doctors joined
the Nazi party and that doctors played a major part in designing and
administering the Nazi programmes of forcible sterilisation, “euthanasia,” and
the industrial scale murder of Jews and gypsies.1 2 Much of our present day
concern for the abuse of humans used in experiments stems from the extreme
brutality many German doctors showed towards concentration camp prisoners
exploited to advance the cause of German military medicine.
Tobacco in the Reich
One topic that has only recently begun
to attract attention is the Nazi anti-tobacco movement.4 5 6 Germany had the world's
strongest antismoking movement in the 1930s and early 1940s, supported by Nazi
medical and military leaders worried that tobacco might prove a hazard to the
race.1 4 Many Nazi leaders were
vocal opponents of smoking. Anti-tobacco activists pointed out that whereas
Churchill, Stalin, and Roosevelt were all fond of tobacco, the three major
fascist leaders of Europe—Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco—were all non-smokers.7 Hitler was the most
adamant, characterizing tobacco as “the wrath of the Red Man against the White
Man for having been given hard liquor.”
Hitler's so-called anti-cigarette actions were quite limited, e.g., he
merely "banned smoking by uniformed police, SA and SS men in public, even
when off-duty." And he merely approved "severe restrictions [not a
ban] on the advertising of cigarettes," Hobhouse, supra, p 232. Germany continues even
through the year 2006 to oppose banning such ads. See Germany's lawsuit to stop
the European Union from establishing such as ban: Germany v Parliament
and Council (Case C-380/03, 12 December 2006). Germany lost, the
court upheld banning most forms of cigarette advertising.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/07/the-nazis-forgotten-anti-smoking-campaign/373766/
The Nazis' Forgotten
Anti-Smoking Campaign
The Third Reich viewed
tobacco as a threat to the health of the "chosen folk."
TRACY BROWN
HAMILTON
JULY 9, 2014
DENIS DEFREYNE/FLICKR
“Nazi Germany was governed by a
health-conscious political elite bent on European conquest and genocidal
extermination,” writes Stanford researcher Robert Proctor in his book, The Nazi
War on Cancer, “and
tobacco at the time was viewed as one among many ‘threats’ to the health of the
chosen folk.”
In 1939, German scientist Franz
Müller presented the first epidemiological study linking tobacco use and
cancer. In 1943, a paper prepared by German scientists Eberhard Schairer and
Erich Schöniger at Jena University confirmed this study, and convincingly established
for the first time that cigarette smoking is a direct cause of lung cancer.
Research by
German doctors also brought to light the harmful effects of secondhand smoke
for the first time, and coined the term “passive smoking.” But Proctor says the
findings cannot be separated from the context in which they were realized.
According to Proctor, Schairer and
Schöniger’s paper needs to be seen as “a political document, a product of the
Nazi ideological focus on tobacco as a corrupting force whose elimination would
serve the cause of ‘racial hygiene.’” The Nazi agenda was centered on the idea
of establishing and maintaining a German Aryan master race that was free of
illness or impurity, and tobacco was just one of the many influences that could
weaken the so-called Übermensch.
“Nazism was a movement of muscular,
health-conscious young men worried about things like the influence of Jews in
German culture and the evils of communism,” Proctor says, “but also about the
injurious effects of white bread, asbestos, and artificial food dyes.”
According to an article in Toxicological Sciences, before 1900, lung cancer was extremely rare
worldwide, but incidents of the disease increased dramatically by the 1930’s.
This coincided with the growing popularity of cigarette smoking beginning
toward the end of the 20th century, but a link was never identified between
lung cancer and smoking until Nazi-era scientists made the connection.
Research into the harmful effects
of tobacco was funded by the Institute for the Struggle Against Tobacco, which
was established in 1941and funded by Hitler’s Reich Chancellery. The Institute
was led by Karl Astel, a doctor, high-ranking SS officer and fervent
anti-Semite, according to Proctor.
Among other things, Astel’s
institute funded and distributed pamphlets and articles about the harmful
effects of tobacco, including a collection of Goethe’s views on the subject.
The institute conducted research into the potential damage or mutations that
nicotine could cause to the genetic material of the master race
Nazi
Germany’s well-known obsession with creating a master Aryan race led to many
atrocities. But from these same sinister motives came research that may have
had health benefits for the German people during World War II—studies on the
dangers of smoking that led to the most advanced anti-tobacco campaign of its
time. Unfortunately, the campaign was only concerned with protecting the health
of Aryan Germans.
The wholesale ban of smoking on
the Veterans
Administration Medical campus in
October 2020 is an outgrowth (with a $50 fine) that leaves one wondering about
the actual motive for establishing the ban. Is it just an experiment in
sociological engineering or manipulation? A flexing of Progressive muscle? Is
it really a concern about the vets, the children, the elderly, or the planet?
Or is it an exercise in conformity with the consensus that smoking and
secondhand (or passive) smoking comprisa violation of non-smokers’ rights?
Universal bans, such as Tim Kane’s last act as governor of Virginia,
represented the statewide seizure of private property and the obliteration of
freedom of choice. The result was the obedience of bars and restaurants and
businesses; of their compliance, and of the compliance of their customers or
employees.
If enough people who claim to be
harmed by secondhand smoke can agitate for a smoking ban, there are always
politicians ready to endorse a law in their favor; regardless of the ruination
of businesses and private lives. The “harm” is too often feigned or faked;
non-smokers who put on a show to demonstrate their opposition to smoking and
secondhand smoke do so to demonstrate their personal dislike of tobacco and
their agreement with the anti-smokers.
Their dislike of it should not be
the legislative basis of law. But in an era of Progressivism their whims become
the rule. Everyone must obey and comply.
Smokers who exercise their rights are regarded as pariahs to be shunned and
even punished with social snubbing or an alienation from normal contact with
others.
The harm of smoking and “passive’
smoking may be real, but it cannot be applied to all individuals; it depends on
a person’s physical make-up. I’ve read many stories of individuals who live
past 100 years but who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for years. There are
numerous studies of the harm (government and private), dating from
the 19th century on
through the Nazi period to the present. I am tempted to doubt the purpose of
these studies. The harm of smoking and “passive’ smoking may be real, but it
cannot be applied to all individuals; it depends on a person’s physical
make-up. I’ve read many stories of individuals who live past 100 years but who
smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for years. There are numerous studies of the
harm (government and private), dating from the 19th century on
through the Nazi period to the present. I am tempted to doubt the purpose of
most of these studies; their purpose seems to be to prove a priori that
smoking is bad and must be suppressed.
This is not to say that Secretary
Wilkie of the VA is a fascist. But it is to suggest that his smoking ban and
policy is in line with the worst consequences of political and social
collectivism.
The wholesale ban of smoking on
the Veterans
Administration Medical campus in
October 2020 is an outgrowth (with a $50 fine) that leaves one wondering about
the actual motive for establishing the ban. Is it just an experiment in
sociological engineering or manipulation? A flexing of Progressive muscle? Is
it really a concern about the vets, the children, the elderly, or the planet?
Or is it an exercise in conformity with the consensus that smoking and
secondhand (or passive) smoking is a violation of non-smokers’ rights?
Universal bans, such as Tim Kane’s last act as governor of Virginia,
represented the statewide seizure of private property and the obliteration of
freedom of choice. The result was the obedience of bars and restaurants and
businesses; of their compliance, and of the compliance of their customers or
employees.
If enough people who claim to be
harmed by secondhand smoke can agitate for a smoking ban, there are always
politicians ready to endorse a law in their favor; regardless of the ruination
of businesses and private lives. The “harm” is too often feigned or faked;
non-smokers who put on a show to demonstrate their opposition to smoking and
secondhand smoke do so to demonstrate their personal dislike of tobacco and
their agreement with the anti-smokers.
Their dislike of it should not be
the legislative basis of law. But in an era of Progressivism their whims become
the rule. Everyone must obey and comply.
Smokers who exercise their rights are regarded as pariahs to be shunned and
even punished with social snubbing or an alienation from normal contact with
others.
The harm of smoking and “passive’
smoking may be real, but it cannot be applied to all individuals; it depends on
a person’s physical make-up. I’ve read many stories of individuals who live
past 100 years but who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for years. There are
numerous studies of the harm (government and private), dating from
the 19th century on
through the Nazi period to the present. I am tempted to doubt the purpose of
these studies. The harm of smoking and “passive’ smoking may be real, but it
cannot be applied to all individuals; it depends on a person’s physical
make-up. I’ve read many stories of individuals who live past 100 years but who
smoked a pack of cigarettes a day for years. There are numerous studies
of the harm (government and private), dating from the 19th century on through the Nazi period to the present. I am tempted to doubt the purpose of most of these studies; their purpose seems to be to prove a priori that smoking is bad and must be suppressed.
of the harm (government and private), dating from the 19th century on through the Nazi period to the present. I am tempted to doubt the purpose of most of these studies; their purpose seems to be to prove a priori that smoking is bad and must be suppressed.
This is not to say that Secretary
Wilkie of the VA is a fascist. But it is to suggest that his smoking ban and
policy is in line with the worst consequences of political and social
collectivism.
Edward Cline (February 2020)
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