[Mpls] More Tobacco Thoughts

[Mike Jensvold]

I got a reply from the author of the star tribune bit 
http://www.startribune.com/stories/462/4797883.html that said that 3/4 of 
the people surveyed favored a total ban. The exact wording of the question 
was :

  "Would you favor or oppose a city law in Minneapolis that would prohibit 
smoking in most indoor public places, including workplaces, public 
buildings, offices, restaurants and bars?"

This is misleading because smoking is already banned in most public 
places.  Had the "restaurants and bars" issue stood alone I believe the 
percentage in favor of the ban would have been much less.

Anti-smoking groups are not all angels.  They have done society a wonderful 
service by exposing the lies of big tobacco.  But they now seek to 
perpetuate themselves, like any large organization.  They are exaggerating 
the dangers of occasional exposure to second hand smoke, lobbying for 
ever-higher cigarette taxes, and even for banning smoking in outdoor places 
like parks; sidewalks are probably not far off.

In his wonderful book The Botany of Desire, author Michael Pollan makes a 
persuasive argument that psychotropic drugs can function as a "cultural 
mutagen" (page 148-150 in my copy).  Nicotine is a powerful stimulant.  It 
has been a part of the medium which gave rise to music from big band to 
punk rock to hard rock.

For those who advocate a total ban so they can enjoy an occasional 
smoke-free concert - know that you are destroying a part of the creative 
mix which may have helped bring that music into being in the first place.



Below is a quote (which I hope is not apocryphal) from that famous smoker 
Mark Twain; without his nicotine-fueled insights American literature would 
not be the same.

Mike Jensvold,
East Isles

The Moral Statistician

Originally published in Sketches, Old and New, 1893

I don't want any of your statistics; I took your whole batch and lit my 
pipe with it.
I hate your kind of people. You are always ciphering out how much a man's 
health is injured, and how much his intellect is impaired, and how many 
pitiful dollars and cents he wastes in the course of ninety-two years' 
indulgence in the fatal practice of smoking; and in the equally fatal 
practice of drinking coffee; and in playing billiards occasionally; and in 
taking a glass of wine at dinner, etc. etc. And you are always figuring out 
how many women have been burned to death because of the dangerous fashion 
of wearing expansive hoops, etc. etc. You never see more than one side of 
the question.
You are blind to the fact that most old men in America smoke and drink 
coffee, although, according to your theory, they ought to have died young; 
and that hearty old Englishmen drink wine and survive it, and portly old 
Dutchmen both drink and smoke freely, and yet grow older and fatter all the 
time. And you never try to find out how much solid comfort, relaxation, and 
enjoyment a man derives from smoking in the course of a lifetime (which is 
worth ten times the money he would save by letting it alone), nor the 
appalling aggregate of happiness lost in a lifetime by your kind of people 
from not smoking. Of course you can save money by denying yourself all 
those little vicious enjoyments for fifty years; but then what can you do 
with it? What use can you put it to? Money can't save your infinitesimal 
soul. All the use that money can be put to is to purchase comfort and 
enjoyment in this life; therefore, as you are an enemy to comfort and 
enjoyment where is the use of accumulating cash?
It won't do for you to say that you can use it to better purpose in 
furnishing a good table, and in charities, and in supporting tract 
societies, because you know yourself that you people who have no petty 
vices are never known to give away a cent, and that you stint yourselves so 
in the matter of food that you are always feeble and hungry. And you never 
dare to laugh in the daytime for fear some poor wretch, seeing you in a 
good humor, will try to borrow a dollar of you; and in church you are 
always down on your knees, with your ears buried in the cushion, when the 
contribution-box comes around; and you never give the revenue officers a 
full statement of your income.

Now you know all these things yourself, don't you? Very well, then, what is 
the use of your stringing out your miserable lives to a lean and withered 
old age? What is the use of your saving money that is so utterly worthless 
to you? In a word, why don't you go off somewhere and die, and not be 
always trying to seduce people into becoming as ornery and unlovable as you 
are yourselves, by your villainous "moral statistics"?
Now, I don't approve of dissipation, and I don't indulge in it either; but 
I haven't a particle of confidence in a man who has no redeeming petty 
vices. And so I don't want to hear from you any more. I think you are the 
very same man who read me a long lecture last week about the degrading vice 
of smoking cigars, and then came back, in my absence, with your 
reprehensible fire-proof gloves on, and carried off my beautiful parlor stove.