Hal Bidlack
My regular reader (hi Jeff!) will recall that I’ve often recalled the idea that freedom in the United States can be nicely encapsulated in the idea that your right to swing your arm ends where my nose begins. And as any former student of mine who took my intro to American government and national security class at the US Air Force Academy will hopefully recall, all government is about the issue of balancing liberty and order.
I thought of those ideas when I read a recent Colorado Politics story. Ironically and, frankly, refreshingly, it was not the COVID story about two unnamed medical professionals who were suing for the right to not get vaccinated because, you know, religion.
Here’s a tip: if your religion requires you to avoid taking a medicine that will not only protect you from a potentially deadly illness but will also protect your patients from being infected and possibly dying because of you, maybe it’s time to rethink your career choices.
What you need is not a job wherein you are trying to keep people healthy but rather a job where you can freely deny science and reality without infecting others. You need a job where you never see other people. May I suggest becoming one of those forest rangers that sit alone in those tall towers watching for forest fires, or perhaps becoming an ethics advisor to the current GOP. Both occupations will result in you not seeing too many people.
But I digress…
No, the story I want to talk about has to do with the Denver City Council again pushing back a vote on how far to go in regulating and even banning the sale of certain flavored tobacco products. Now, I should state right off the top that I am a rabid anti-tobacco guy. My late mom, who never ever smoked and who died of cancer in 1993, had serious lung problems. As a result, she couldn’t go anywhere where people might be smoking. And in those days, that meant lots of places were off limits, including air travel, where people used to smoke in the back rows of airplanes and the smoke always drifted forward. So, I’m pretty zealous on smoking.
The bill, if passed by the Council, would ban the sale of flavored tobacco products. As noted in the article, the ban would include “flavored hookah, menthol cigarettes, chewing tobacco, cigars and vaping products could not be sold — the last of which is the main target of the ban to try to reduce youth tobacco use.”
The intent of the proposed ban is clear and, frankly, noble. Flavored tobacco products induced over 80% of the kids aged 12 to 17 to start using tobacco, and most said they keep using because they like the flavor. Given that the tobacco industry has a real problem in keeping customers, since it tends to kill off lots of their dedicated clientele, tobacco companies need to hook new people on their products. And flavored smoke has proved very successful in getting young people to pick up the vile and deadly habit.
The courts and, frankly, all reasonable people, have long acknowledged that kids are less able to make informed and wise decisions than adults because they are, well, kids. The adolescent brain isn’t fully developed, especially when it comes to making important decisions. So, it is vital that kids be protected from making terrible decisions that have life-long implications.
I’d be surprised if there are too many people who think, for example, that the voting age should be reduced to 13, nor that the drinking age should be similarly reduced. I suspect only the nuttiest gun proponent would argue for universal concealed carry for kids in middle school. Why? Because kids don’t always make good decisions.
But is the proposed Denver ordinance a good idea? As I noted above, I’m biased. But the evidence does show that most kids who get into tobacco do so via the flavored tobacco route. Eliminating flavored products would not keep every kid from picking up tobacco, but the evidence suggests that the impact of the ban could be dramatic and quite helpful.
Just as I cannot understand why a health care professional would want to become a public heath threat by not getting vaccinated, I don’t understand how the people running the flavored tobacco industry sleep at night. I urge the Denver City Council to move forward with the ban on flavored sales as an important step forward in protecting kids (and if you are a Simpson’s fan, yes, I’m playing the “won’t someone think of the children” card).
In balancing liberty and order we must always be careful of governmental overreach. And people of good hearts will disagree on how much government is too little or too much. But when it comes to protecting our youth against the advances of an industry that will do them physical injury, it seems to me that we need to be proactive.
Work out the details, City Council, and let’s get moving on banning flavored tobacco products.
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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October 29, 2021 at 02:00PM
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