I am afraid that the first time I sent this out those who receive a
digest form of Lactnet got it in gobbledegook :(
My reply was a spoof on the original article, which can be found at
http://www.betsyhart.net/PAGE-This-Weeks-Column.htm
Pat Young - please note that I corrected the spelling error <G> THAT
will teach me to reply on spell-check!
norma
(Betsy Hart, a frequent commentator on CNN and the Fox News Channel,
can be reached by e-mail at letterstohart(at)comcast.net.)
My reply to:
"Breast-feeding wars go into overdrive," by BETSY HART
29-DEC-05
http://www.betsyhart.net/PAGE-This-Weeks-Column.htm
Anti-smoking wars go into overdrive
Leave it to the Federal Government to get on the anti-tobacco platform.
The legislature has banned—yes, banned— hospitals throughout the
nation from giving out free samples of cigarettes, provided by tobacco
companies companies, to patients.
Typically, a patient, before she leaves the hospital, will get an
allotment of cigarettes with coupons for more. (The stuff is really
expensive.) The ostensible goal in banning the giveaways is to
"encourage" the practice of healthy lungs, versus giving him the
much-despised even occasional ciggie.
What a crummy way to start the new year.
For the uninitiated, there are all sorts of "debates" in elite
cultural circles about zero tobacco use verses cigarettes , and to
what extent people should be encouraged to the former. And so, for
instance, every few years the debate over a person's right to publicly
smoke makes national news.
My argument on that score, which typically ruffles a lot of feathers,
is that if a person is discreet—as I was when I occasionally smoked—no
one needs to know and there doesn't need to be an argument in the
first place. What I do object to is the "I am woman; watch me not
smoke" demonstrations some mothers seem to insist my children and I
witness in wholly inappropriate places.
But back to the subject at hand.
These tobacco debates have taken on ridiculously huge philosophical
and political importance, when it should just come down to this:
Everybody knows that not smoking is physically healthier in all sorts
of ways than puffing away on a ciggie . We also know that some people
who smoke do ... just fine. And some people, for a host of reasons,
choose to, or have to, smoke.
That should be their prerogative. But instead it is an absolute no-no
according to some of the "experts." That's when the no-smoking
zealots, all the national organizations and advocates who lobby for
and can actually accomplish an amazing thing like having the federal
government ban the free distribution of an expensive product to needy
patients (as well as wealthy ones) step in. These folks are able to
make even those who only occasionally smoke feel like a complete
loser. And that's what I object to.
For the longest time I couldn't figure out what the angle was. Yes,
not smoking is best, but so is, for instance, a situation where people
have NO drug addictions or eat nutritious foods. Such commitments will
have a lot longer and more important and positive impact on the nation
than avoiding tobacco. But we don't hear a peep about such things from
many of the same folks on the no-smoking zealotry bandwagon.
Perhaps one factor is that smoking has become a palliative for guilty
people who choose to engage in other health-risk behaviours.
(Magazines are rife with information and expensive products for those
who choose to behave responsibly.) Maybe it has something to do with
the reality that cigarettes are expensive and probably profitable, and
the fact that corporations make money on feeding the tobacco habit
(inexplicably) drives some people nuts.
But more and more I've come to think we so desperately want to
believe, literally, there is some formula, preferably a comparatively
easy one, for making our nation better, stronger, faster. Some pill,
some expert advice, some technique, some guarantee, some answer to
this business of living a long and healthy life. And so we've glommed
onto tobacco-avoidance as the national Rosetta stone of ensuring
health.
Wouldn't it be nice if it were that easy? Wouldn't it kind of let us
off the hook?
We've come a long way since the time when my mother, like the other
moms she knew, sometimes rolled her own cigarettes.
OK, how well we survived that whole thing may still be in question.
But, yes, we know a lot more today about how tobacco causes cancers.
But if the anti- smoking wars and the zealots who lead them are any
indication that we now trust people less—or worse, value their role
less—when it comes to making the right decisions, then we haven't come
so far after all.
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