SMOKERS OF THE WORLD, UNITE!

Chuck Muth

If you think the smoke Nazis are restricted to America’s shores, think again. There’s a worldwide war against tobacco going on, and if you people think these people will stop at tobacco, you’re smoking something other than tobacco.

“The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control,” reports CNS News, “is the first-ever global health policy negotiated under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO?).” The treaty includes bans on tobacco advertising, limits on second-hand smoke and mandatory warning labels on packs of smokes which cover at least 30 percent of the display area. It also prohibits the use of terms such as “low tar” or “light” or “mild.”

Now, a lot of you silly gooses out there might be scratching your head and saying, “Hey, how in the world can an unelected world organization tell the manufacturers of a legal product where they can advertise, what they can say in their advertisements (so long as it’s not false) and force them to use a third of their packaging space to display a warning that every idiot with a second grade education already knows?”

Good question. Who IS to blame for this absurdity?

Um...our president.

You see, this worldwide jihad on tobacco products isn’t some relic of the liberal Clinton administration. No, this treaty was signed by none other than President Bush’s own Health and Human Services Secretary, Tommy Thompson. You knew this, right?

Yup. “The U.S., with HHS as the lead agency, actively participated throughout the drafting process and negotiations to help achieve a strong and effective instrument for global tobacco control,” reports CNS News. However, the treaty could still be blocked by the rock-solid, principled, conservative, free-market United States Senate which still must vote on ratification.

We’re doomed.

Meanwhile, as the Bush administration is expanding the War on Tobacco globally, that’s not stopping the American-made cradle-to-grave nanny-staters from acting locally. No, siree.

We take you now to Apparatchik Stephanie Young-Peterson, tobacco prevention czar for the Lane County Public Health Ministry in the People’s Republic of Oregon, who has her pantyhose all up in a twist over tobacco companies giving FREE chewing tobacco to University of Oregon fraternities.

Those bastards!

Of course, some of you may be under the false impression that college students have reached the legal age of adulthood and are perfectly capable of making the decision on whether or not to chew tobacco on their own. Oh you poor, poor, silly, naïve fools.

This isn’t about treating adults like...well, adults. As Young-Peterson points out in the campus newspaper, The Oregon Daily Emerald, giving away free product samples of chewing tobacco isn’t just a good marketing strategy, “It’s like, ‘Hey, here’s free cancer!’”

Well, when you put it like that...

Still, shouldn’t adults be able and allowed to make up their own minds on whether or not they want “free cancer” if offered? No, says fellow Apparatchik Paula Straight, Director of Health Re-education at the Ministry. “It’s hard to understand tobacco addiction if you haven’t experienced it,” she tells the Daily Emerald.

Well, I haven’t experienced being struck by a bolt of lightning either, but I’m pretty sure I understand the potential ramifications of running through a thunderstorm on a golf course waving a four-iron over my head. Duh.

Nevertheless, Straight proposes to ban free samples of tobacco products to fraternities as a violation of their “substance free” requirements. Yes, Straight (and no, you cannot escape the irony of the name) wishes to include a can of Copenhagen on the same list as a bag of heroin. It would be in the fraternities’ “best interest” to do so, chirps in Young-Peterson.

No, what would be in the “best interest” of liberty-loving adults everywhere, including those in college, would be to stick Young-Peterson, Straight and the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control on a one-way cruise in a leaky boat to the Bermuda Triangle.

Skoal, brother.

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Chuck Muth is president of Citizen Outreach, a non-profit public policy advocacy organization in Washington, D.C.
chuckmuth@earthlink.net