In conversation with a representative of the hospitality industry, a Hawaiian legislator describes bills she is proposing that would permit some accommodation of smokers, what we shall call beginner steps toward sanity.
State Representative Colleen Meyer is presenting bills that would permit smoking patios at restaurants, smoking within hospitality venues of specified types, and limited accommodation of smokers at airports. She is listening to the afflicted hospitality industry. She recognizes that smokers, including tourists vital to the economy of the islands, are repulsed by Hawaii’s vicious disrespect. She is on the right track. Her bills are small steps in the right direction of reversing anti-smoker oppression and hate.
The representative betrays the influence of antitobacco upon herself however. She would allow smoking at bars or outside of restaurants even though, she says, smoking is "not the best thing." Is feasting at a luau the best thing? Is drinking liquor the best thing? Is wasting one’s time sunbathing in Hawaii the best thing either? Those thoughts do not occur to her. They should not. We take exception to her singling out of smoking. Meyer then refers to smokers as "people that are addicted, people that enjoy it." Exception again: people who wish to quit smoking long-term have greater success than do others with losing weight and keeping it off. The number of smokers and former smokers in the US is about the same today. Most who quit smoking do so simply on their own. There is no such thing as a tobacco dry-out clinic because nobody has ever wanted one. Nicotine is less "intoxicating" than is caffeine. The term "addiction," applied to dinner, perhaps followed by coffee, and a cigarette, or to enjoyment of leisure generally according to one’s preference, is strained indeed. With regard to alcohol the term may certainly be appropriate. We are not alcohol prohibitionists, by the way, adults know the risks of adult pleasures, and their choices should be respected. Here again, referring only to the enjoyment of tobacco as "addiction," Meyer shows the effect of antitobacco groupthink.
We may say, however, that Representative Meyer is a "recovering" tobaccophobe. Despite the antitobacco fog engulfing legislators, and society, she perceives the light of reason that still burns outside the loathsome murk. The Hawaiian economy, based considerably on tourist attraction, may hurt more than most do as a result of the smoker pogrom. Yet harm to economy, and tragically to civil society in a thousand ways, are the results everywhere this hateful ideology descends. Smoking bans are based on hate dressed in a white coat. "Lifestyle epidemiology," the modern incarnation of eugenics, defames science in the cause of vicious technocracy. Colleen Meyer has begun to come around in recognizing a need to turn things around. When society is fully recovered, accommodation of all good citizens, based as it was for centuries on natural good will, free of hate-based hysteria and egregious government intrusion, will be reëstablished. We applaud Colleen Meyer for moving in the right direction and wish her continued progress on the promising road to reason and recovery.
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