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I don't think we are ever going to be able to move towards a perfectly-reasonable public stance towards intoxicants. My personal problem with marijuana is that

I don't think we are ever going to be able to move towards a perfectly-reasonable public stance towards intoxicants. My personal problem with marijuana is that I just don't want to smell the shit everywhere. Your human right to ingest whatever substance you want is going to inevitably conflict with my right to choose whether I want to ingest it too or not. We've gone in one policy direction with marijuana, and another entirely with tobacco. Once you get to legalization, you're inevitably thrust back towards getting it the heck back out of the public sphere. Tobacco seems to offer the perfect opportunity to examine the intersection of human rights way of looking at it with "plain ole'" regulation for greater social harmony. Tobacco, like it or not, is a mind-altering drug that people rely on for all sorts of really personal reasons. Our recent push to banish it is pure and simple classism. But the people decrying the war on drugs also seem to often nurture a quiet bigotry against smokers. Smoking is legal, for now at least. But eventually you won't be able to light up without running afoul of some regulation, God forbid they start actually enforcing the now-common 50 foot rule from the entrance of businesses. So yeah, maybe the focus on tax revenue is probably the best one. I like human rights as much as the next guy. But I'm gonna turn into a raving classist asshole the second my neighbor forces me to smell his damn weed through the shared wall. (yes it's happened) I'm already quietly cheering the slow banishment of tobacco, cognitive liberty be damned. Sure, cannabis and tobacco are both smoked, and not all drugs are. But are we really prepared as a society for a world in which drug use is truly legal? Are people really forgetting that these things are well and truly dangerous? Cocaine makes a real mess out of people. What about synthetic drugs? I don't think you're ever going to be able to convince a reasonable person that those things should be legal. So there you go, War on Drugs part 2. To sum up, legalization isn't really a viable public option. It's a fantasy.

nerdponx 9y ago
Tobacco, like it or not, is a mind-altering drug that people rely on for all sorts of really personal reasons. Our recent push to banish it is pure and simple classism. That doesn't follow. Are you suggesting that some social classes have better reasons for smoking than others?
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  Smoking is seen as a lower-class thing to do.
  - jimnotgym 9y ago
    Really, I thought a fat cigar was one of the most potent images of capitalism?
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      Sure. Capitalism is low-class. Upper classes don't need to mess around with any of that lowly wealth-creation nonsense. They already have wealth, why bother making more of it? The cigar-chomping capitalist stereotype is just the classist observation that you can never really change your class, only accumulate cash, which is the lowest form of wealth. Rappers seem very self-aware of this and poke fun at the tropes whenever they can. When the cigarette-smoking vagrant finally sees a little success, he switches over to cigars and thinks he's something.
      - jimnotgym 9y ago
        The class system in the UK is rather different. Our 'captains of industry' are commonly upper-middle class. Suprised if the the US is actually that different.
        vinceguidry 9y ago
        I was actually thinking more along the lines of continental Europe, where class lines were really stark through most of history and in many ways still are now. The UK has a very interesting relationship with class, one I constantly hunger for new insights on. A recent article on the class divide between barristers and their clerks had me riveted. The US is easy. We're all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Everybody in the US is classist against everybody else. Makes it simple really.
DanBC 9y ago
> Our recent push to banish it is pure and simple classism. No, it's a response to the overwhelming evidence we have that smoking tobacco is massively harmful. You seem to be saying that poor people will be disproportionately affected by smoking cessation laws, and that this is somehow unjust. The fact that poor people disproportionately smoke is the actual injustice, and is one of the reasons for the mortality gap between rich and poor.
- vinceguidry 9y ago
  > No, it's a response to the overwhelming evidence we have that smoking tobacco is massively harmful. Pardon me while I guffaw incessantly. That might be the excuse given, but people really just don't want to smell it all the time.
  - 3131s 9y ago
    That's a disgusting reason to put people in prison.
    - vinceguidry 9y ago
      You don't have to go to prison if you don't break the law.

nerdponx 9y ago

Tobacco, like it or not, is a mind-altering drug that people rely on for all sorts of really personal reasons. Our recent push to banish it is pure and simple classism. That doesn't follow. Are you suggesting that some social classes have better reasons for smoking than others?

vinceguidry 9y ago
Smoking is seen as a lower-class thing to do.
- jimnotgym 9y ago
  Really, I thought a fat cigar was one of the most potent images of capitalism?
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    Sure. Capitalism is low-class. Upper classes don't need to mess around with any of that lowly wealth-creation nonsense. They already have wealth, why bother making more of it? The cigar-chomping capitalist stereotype is just the classist observation that you can never really change your class, only accumulate cash, which is the lowest form of wealth. Rappers seem very self-aware of this and poke fun at the tropes whenever they can. When the cigarette-smoking vagrant finally sees a little success, he switches over to cigars and thinks he's something.
    - jimnotgym 9y ago
      The class system in the UK is rather different. Our 'captains of industry' are commonly upper-middle class. Suprised if the the US is actually that different.
      - vinceguidry 9y ago
        I was actually thinking more along the lines of continental Europe, where class lines were really stark through most of history and in many ways still are now. The UK has a very interesting relationship with class, one I constantly hunger for new insights on. A recent article on the class divide between barristers and their clerks had me riveted. The US is easy. We're all just temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Everybody in the US is classist against everybody else. Makes it simple really.

DanBC 9y ago

> Our recent push to banish it is pure and simple classism. No, it's a response to the overwhelming evidence we have that smoking tobacco is massively harmful. You seem to be saying that poor people will be disproportionately affected by smoking cessation laws, and that this is somehow unjust. The fact that poor people disproportionately smoke is the actual injustice, and is one of the reasons for the mortality gap between rich and poor.

vinceguidry 9y ago
> No, it's a response to the overwhelming evidence we have that smoking tobacco is massively harmful. Pardon me while I guffaw incessantly. That might be the excuse given, but people really just don't want to smell it all the time.
- 3131s 9y ago
  That's a disgusting reason to put people in prison.
  - vinceguidry 9y ago
    You don't have to go to prison if you don't break the law.