It started with smoking. The 1960s and 1970s saw little popular objection to legislation restricting advertisements by private companies purveying a legal product. Little objection was raised thereafter when these same companies were banned from promoting their wares at all. Broadly shamed, even smokers have mutely accepted confiscatory taxes on cigarettes. As laws to protect the public from passive smoking have extended parts of the US to beaches, parks and even one’s own apartment balcony — locations where the danger to others is virtually nonexistent — few have cried overreach. It’s a truism: tobacco companies are evil (and so are smokers). The suppression of smoking is widely regarded as a public health triumph.
Thus few of us ever paused to examine the assumption behind anti-smoking laws: that the people are not to be trusted to make their own decisions regarding their health. The idiots have to be controlled.
For the curtailment of civil liberties, public health policy, graciously instituted for our own good, has been the thin end of the wedge for decades.
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in