A moral question. Are we obliged to do for people what they won't do for themselves? Only in our self-interest.
This is something of a dodge of an intersting question posed by a thoughtful reader:
Stephanie Saul’s NYT article, “Cigarette Bill Treats Menthol With Leniency,” (link below) is a sobering reminder of how U.S. interests groups use their political power for profit.
Here we have an example of (1) anti-African American interest groups or (2) interests groups indifferent to African Americans flaunting their political power at the expense of a few million middle-class and lower-class African Americans. Menthol disproportionately harms the 5 million African American cigarette addicts who mostly smoke Newports and Kools. Who cares about these African Americans? These African Americans don’t wield very much political or economic power. So, who, politically, has enough incentive to look out for them on the Hill?
If any interest groups do care, so what? Are any pro-African American interest groups powerful enough to stop this Menthol-based compromise/attack? I doubt it.
As an aside, any mention of clove cigarettes immediately brings to mind an old friend of mine. He was a real smart white dude, a pizza faced chubby guy with a devastating wit but absolutely no charm. He and I worked in a tech support lab. He was a huge fan of electronic keyboards and the music they made. Pet Shop Boys, Thompson Twins, New Order, The Orb. This guy was the prototypical goth, just before there was such a thing. He smoked clove cigarettes, constantly. This was 1989.
By any measure of anything I knew, there was no reason for me to believe this young man could be anything but a loser. He lived with his mother in a 'slurb (a suburb whose faded glory has faded just about the point for the necessity of burglar bars) drove a beater. I'm sure I was his only friend. He used to tell me about how people did him wrong. The thing was that he had an odd kind of self-confidence. The sort I imagine you get when you realize you have no other way to go but up. And furthermore, he spent a lot of money on his keyboards, and he had the kind of pride you have in the one perfect thing that you own. He didn't spend money on nice clothes, or a nice car or much of anything. He knew he couldn't play any role of cool. And yet there he was with his clove cigarettes.
I thought smoking clove cigarettes in and of itself was ridiculous. It was all about looking cool. And for him it totally worked, but only because I knew him. It was the only concession he made to fashion. I mean he actually looked like a twenty year old Pugsly Addams. But right now I could imagine him to be as cool as Kevin Smith. He had only his integrity, and he had to live it. Life gave him no other choice.
As it stands, I cannot for the life of me remember his name. But I remember his example. At some point, the powers that be declared something against clove cigarettes and they fell from popularity. No longer could you get them at the little shops in Westwood. And I wonder if he managed to find someplace to get them, or if he cared now that they were going out of style. But I know that when he could smoke them, he was happy. And if it was discovered that they cause cancer just as much as regular cigarettes, would he change. I can't imagine that he would. It was his pleasure. One of few.
We all know how much the sticks contribute to excess death. Well we the people pretend to know, we get the message of the experts. None of us really knows how many cigarettes it takes to increase your chances 1%. We don't know the math of inhaling or of second-hand smoke like we know how many drinks until our BAC is illegal. We simply trust the smart people who are liberal enough to care for our well-being in our merciful society, which is after all, a good idea for the self-interested American. Why bother to figure things out for yourself when every expert in a white coat or photographed in front of a shelf full of huge books is willing to tell you what you should or should not do? Cigarettes = bad. OK thanks for that, Professor.
Are smokers happy?
Are we caring for their souls or trying to make them happier? Are we trying to show off what we know? I say it's a bit more of the latter than the former when it comes to passing laws. Advice is one thing, prohibition is another. When the decision is taken to proscribe, the calculation is one for society. If we ban cigarettes or cap guns for boys, we are thinking in the aggregate. We make society better if we have fewer people die of cancer. We make society better if we arrest the kind of aggression in boys that might lead to violence. To hell with the individual. We demand sacrifice for the individual for the betterment of society. Passing laws of this sort is, plainly, social engineering.
And thus we have a conflict between the needs of the few and the cause of the many. But I'm talking about the needs of the few whose brilliant ideas and social calculations incubate such prohibitions.
To consider the fate of African Americans and menthol cigarettes is the province of a few who would do for African Americans in society what they clearly have no interest in doing for themselves. Maybe they're happy, maybe they're stupid. No matter what anyone says, the facts about cancer are what they are. It's unquestionably objectively rational that one shouldn't want to die of cancer. Why fight the experts?
Why indeed.
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