“Beware: Second-hand stupidity kills.”
That’s just one of the killer lines from Greg Gutfeld’s rant against the five Democratic senators who introduced a bill to ban marketing e‑cigarettes to teenagers. (It’s from The Five’s e‑cig segment I linked to on Saturday.) Gutfeld called the e‑cig “the greatest medical device since The Clapper,” arguing that it signifies the “first real progress for ending smoking … for good.”
To Barbara Boxer’s claim that there is no way of knowing whether e‑cigs are harmful, Gutfeld responded: “Science, you bozo.”
Boxer and her comrades are, by my lights, far worse than bozos.
They fixate — like the puritanical Nanny State thugs they are — on the “Ooh, bad people get addicted to bad substances” aspect of the issue, rather than on the tremendous leap forward the new technology provides existing smokers. They fear, they say, kids starting with e‑cigs and then taking up smoking tobacco. An unlikely scenario. Nicotine via water vapor is not a likely “gateway” to nicotine-with-deadly-tars via smoke.
E‑cigs aren’t for everyone. The guy who puts these Common Sense episodes up online for me has tried it, and failed. Not a smoker, he wanted to see if he could swap some caffeine over-use with some controlled nicotine use. But he could not breathe the hot steam in.
The gateway was closed.
For smokers, however, the device serves as a wonderful substitution, swapping deadly tar-producing smoke sticks with a much cleaner nicotine rush. It will save lives.
Regulating it, taxing it — discouraging its use — would, as Gutfeld says, “make Death smile.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Five Senators for Death”
Your column title “Common Sense” fits very well on this subject. By such logic, carbonated beverages should be banned because they can be caffeinated, sugar filled, artificially sweetened, acidic, and a gateway to alcohol beverages.
If we could teach or force children to only enjoy water than so many problems could be avoided. To my knowledge, water has the fewest side-effects of any known beverage. Almost any beverage besides water contributes to weight gain and tooth decay.
Water has its downfalls too like for instance would you drink tap water from someones sink with all the lead, dust,dirts, etc.etc.
Boxer and her kameradin are .. Nanny State thugs .…
You are too kind, kind Sir,
Mz do-not-call-me-“ma’am” Boxer and her every-bit-as-fascistic, also-withered-shrewish, parteigenossen, are common-garden totalitarian-state thugs.
Brian Richard Allen
.… water has the fewest side-effects of any known beverage .…
But have you noticed what it does to iron? B)
To Brian: Extremely well said. In most situations,MYOB works best. Once when I wrote this a dozen people critiqued it as being heartless and cruel to people in burning buildings or drowning.children.
Obviously there is a time to intercede to save a life directly, but the problem is the people who see an emergency at every turn. They are eager for The State to supply “Any and All Assistance to Everyone for Every Situation.”
MYOB; would that be more used instead of “there oughta be a law.”
Who will rescue us from the rescuers?
Has anyone found these people in the pockets of ‘Big Tobacco’?