Hal Bidlack
I’ve mentioned many times in these columns that I really, really dislike hypocrisy, but that I also admit to having my own shortcomings in that area.
A test of my personal hypocrisy popped up in a recent Colorado Politics story reporting on efforts in the state legislature to ban the sale of flavored tobacco and nicotine products in Colorado. Personally, I’m a rabid anti-tobacco zealot, as I grew up with a mother suffering the aftereffects of childhood illnesses that permanently damaged her lungs. She could never risk going to places where people might be smoking, as secondhand smoke was a very real risk to her overall health and could perhaps even cause her death. As a result of other people’s “freedom” she was unable to travel with my dad (someone might smoke on the plane) or attend social events where smoke might be in the air. I was then and remain to this day, quite unhappy with people who think their right to smoke includes the right to put others at risk.
So having established my anti-tobacco fervor, let me now state that I am at least somewhat uneasy about the proposed legislation to ban some tobacco products. I’ve mentioned in previous columns that we all have a libertarian streak within us. For some it is quite wide, with radical ideas about eliminating governance. For others, it is much narrower and more limited to an issue or two. I’m somewhere in the middle, and I believe in personal liberty until it hurts someone else. And as it is possible to consume tobacco products in one’s on home, for example, and in other places where others are not impacted, I’m by and large opposed to bans.
But won’t someone think of the children?
The refrain from those who support the ban often centers around kids getting hooked on toxic products like tobacco. The sellers of those products offer flavored tobacco, it is argued, as a gateway poison in hopes of getting people hooked. After all, when your product often kills your customers, you need to find new ones.
There appears to be strong evidence that flavored tobacco products do, in fact, rope in kids that might otherwise not try smoking. Vaping especially has tasty flavors, and 81% of tobacco users ages 12-17 say they started using flavored products, with 71% saying they keep vaping because they like the taste. Just as Joe Camel was used as a cartoon figure to appeal to kids, these vaping flavors seem aimed dead-on at young people. So, let’s ban flavored products, right?
The thing is, it is already illegal to sell tobacco products to kids. Yet they still get them. So, I can see how banning such products would fix the problem, but if an adult wants flavored tobacco, should he or she be prevented from using their drug of choice in the privacy of their own home? I admit, part of me (the zealot part) says yes, but if you don’t worry about everyone’s freedoms, your own can ultimately be at risk.
When I was a kid growing up in Michigan, the drinking age was lowered to 18. When I was 20, the state raised the age to 21. The reason behind the change was that far too many kids, from early teens on up, were finding it relatively easy to get alcohol. Deaths and injuries (especially from motor vehicle accidents) were on the rise. And I remember clearly one of the people arguing to increase the age admitting that raising the drinking age from 18 to 21 was likely not going to stop the 18- and 19-year-old kids from getting booze, but it likely would stop the 14-16-year-old kids from getting their hands on it. The evidence suggests they were correct and raising the drinking age seems to have been a success.
Perhaps a better approach might be to enhance enforcement of the law that Gov. Jared Polis signed back in 2019, raising the age to buy tobacco in Colorado to 21. As with alcohol, we won’t stop the 18-year-old kid from getting a pack of strawberry vape cartridges, but we may keep them out of the hands of a 14-year-old.
I admit, I’m genuinely torn on this issue. A big part of my brain wants to support the prohibition, but that stubborn libertarian streak wonders if that isn’t a step to far. And so, as is so often the case with these columns, I don’t have an answer, only questions. I will watch with interest what the legislature does, and in the meantime, don’t vape, don’t smoke. Oh, and get your darn vaccine shots.
There, turning Dad-mode off…
Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.
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January 25, 2022 at 03:00PM
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