Blowing Smoke: Liberals and Cigarettes

With Iraq backsliding into the hands of al-Qaeda, Iran declaring its dominance over a weak-willed West, pitiful December job numbers on the domestic front, and the ongoing slow-motion train wreck that is Obamacare, it’s good to see Senate Democrats are focused on the important things:

 Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and three of his Democratic colleagues are criticizing the Golden Globe Awards for showing celebrities using electronic cigarettes on TV.

Durbin, along with Sherrod Brown of Ohio, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut and Edward J. Markey of Massachusetts, sent a letter Tuesday to NBCUniversal and the Hollywood Foreign Press Association expressing concern about the potential that showing the e-cigs at the awards show will “glamorize smoking.”

The senators ask the two groups to take action to prevent similar appearances by e-cigs at future shows.

The vilification of smoking over the past few decades has, at times, approached the levels of frothy-mouthed zeal that characterized Prohibition. Now, with Durbin, Brown, et al., the crime does not even have to involve, you know, actual cigarettes.

You don’t have to be Nick Naylor to get tired of politicians’ smoke-blowing hysterics. American liberalism’s cigarette phobia is just another manifestation of its inclination to dictate personal lives, particularly in the arena of health choices. Trans-fats, CFCs, sodas bigger than 16 ounces—the Left’s knee-jerk response is, “There should be a law.” Of course, if you accept the premise that the government has a responsibility for the health care of its citizen—that is, you believe that Obamacare is a government’s moral duty—then it follows that the government should have a say in what citizens consume and imbibe and put in their pipes.

But reading through the Founders, one gets the distinct impression that they did not intend the “general welfare” to apply to citizens’ cholesterol intake or lung capacity. They were all for a “virtuous commonwealth,” but they would never have brooked our infantilizing regulatory tendencies as the way to get one.

Indeed, if the Founders were in the Senate chamber today, forced to suffer Durbin and his comrades droning on, no doubt they would step outside for a lengthy smoke break.