-Caveat Lector-
nurev forwarded:
"The global perspective: a new opium war"
<snip>
While it is the responsibility of each nation to implement
their own tobacco control measures, governmental and
non-governmental organisations in the USA have a very
special responsibility:
The exemplar role - showing that 'It can be done.' The
message from the USA is that smoking rates can be
reduced and that litigation can have a major impact.
Opium and morphine are certainly dangerous, habit-forming drugs.
But once the principle is admitted that it is the duty of government
to protect the individual from his own foolishness, no serious
objections can be raised against further encroachments. A good
case could be made out in favor of the prohibition of alcohol and
nicotine. And why limit the government's benevolent providence to
the protection of the individual's body only? Is not the harm a
man can inflict on his mind and soul even more disastrous than any
bodily evils? Why not prevent him from reading bad books and seeing
bad plays, from looking at bad paintings and statues and from hearing
bad music? The mischief done by bad ideologies, surely, is much more
pernicious, both for the individual and for the whole society, than
that done by narcotic drugs.
These fears are not merely imaginary specters terrifying secluded
doctrinaires. It is a fact that no paternal government, whether ancient
or modern, ever shrank from regimenting its subjects' minds, beliefs,
and opinions. If one abolishes man's freedom to determine his own
consumption, one takes all freedoms away. The naive advocates of
government interference with consumption delude themselves when they
neglect what they disdainfully call the philosophical aspect of the
problem. They unwittingly support the cause of censorship, inquisition,
intolerance, and the persecution of dissenters. --Ludwig von Mises 1949
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