Tag: tobacco

Categories
crime and punishment local leaders Second Amendment rights

A Constitutional Sheriff

ATF, guns, Sheriff, 2nd Amendment

For residents of Klickitat County, Washington, it’s an easy two-​step process. 

Well, optimally, one step. Two only if necessary.

County Sheriff Bob Songer tells gun-​owning constituents that if agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives come to their door wanting to inspect their guns but have no warrant, they should tell the agents to go away.

ATF agents have started to make “surprise home visits of persons who have purchased two or more firearms at one time.” The sheriff was alerted by video of such a visit to a home in Delaware.

Republican Congressman Matt Rosendale of Montana has called for an investigation into the intimidatory practice.

Although Sheriff Songer knows of no such incidents yet occurring in the Evergreen State, he wants his county to be prepared. So he also provides a second step: if the agents don’t leave when asked, the resident should call Songer. He will then “make contact with the agents. If they still refuse to leave, I will personally arrest the ATF agents for Criminal Trespass and book them into the Klickitat County Jail.”

All other sheriffs, please make the same announcement.

Songer belongs to the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association and regards protecting the constitutional rights of his constituents as part of the job.

When it comes to respect for the Constitution, there really shouldn’t be more than one type of sheriff. But if there are going to be more than one, “constitutional sheriff” is the type you want to be.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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national politics & policies

Are You a Conspiracy Theorist?

Representative Rashida Tlaib, screams, Trump, rally

Politicians are all over the vaping issue, like packrats on pet food.

The House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on Economic and Consumer Policy, C‑SPAN explains, held a hearing on the relationship between e‑cigarettes and an outbreak in lung disease. Government experts spoke. There was only one empaneled pro-​vaping witness, Vicki Porter, who said that vaping was “a health miracle to me,” since it got her off of smoking tobacco.

Rep. Debbie Wasserman-​Shultz (D – Fla.) insisted that the record show that she was not to be trusted, since she merely expressed her own opinion as to the superiority of vaping over smoking, noting that Ms. Porter “is not a public health expert.”

But it was Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D – Mich.) who really came out swinging for the interventionist government. Her main concern, writes Robby Soave at Reason, appeared to be Porter’s direct challenging of “the tortured logic of the Oversight and Reform Subcommittee hearing.”

Rep. Tlaib said she “wanted to know more about you,” to Ms. Porter. “You call yourself a ‘converted conservative,’” Tlaib stuttered, “and a reformed Marxist.

“Are you a conspiracy theorist?”

Wh-​what?

Ms. Porter answered reasonably. Then Tlaib questioned her regarding why she had winked at one of her colleagues. Porter said they knew each other.

In the 1960s, the CIA pushed the phrase “conspiracy theorist” as a way to publicly marginalize anyone who questioned official pronouncements on the JFK assassinations and even trickier subjects, like UFOs. Rep. Tlaib is either one of those who bought into the CIA line, or is part of some less-​than-​transparent agenda.

So, are you a conspiracy theorist?

My answer might have been, not until right about now.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.

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Representative Rashida Tlaib, screams, Trump, rally

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Categories
nannyism

Five Senators for Death

“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.

Categories
ideological culture too much government

What’re They Smokin’?

We live in strange times. The “nanny state” mentality is ramping up into overdrive just as the War on Drugs hits the rock of enlightened public opinion.

And nothing shows this to stranger effect than the contrast between the continuing success of the anti-​tobacco movement while marijuana liberalization proceeds apace.

As “medical marijuana” and even decriminalized recreational marijuana use seem to be gaining ground, the whole “smoking in public” thing has become more draconian.

For years now, state legislatures and town councils and even voting populations have been cracking down on smoking tobacco in public, despite the very shaky science regarding second-​hand smoke.

And now the city council of San Rafael, California, has voted — unanimously — to ban residents of apartments, condos, duplexes, and multi-​family houses from smoking cigarettes and other “tobacco products” inside their homes.

This American Cancer Association-​approved legislation is quite intrusive. And one of the writers of the law boasted how little it matters to her who owns what property: “It doesn’t matter if its owner-​occupied or renter-​occupied,” she said. “We didn’t want to discriminate.”

And yet, contrasted with the cannabis liberalization movement — with medical marijuana legal (in some sense) statewide — there is discrimination here: in favor of the “weed” and against the “leaf.”

Perhaps history repeats itself. The war against cannabis began as the war on alcohol ended, with the repeal of the 18th Amendment. We could be we witnessing, now, another weird and inconsistent trade-​off of paranoid prohibitions.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.