July 20, 2015
There is, in man, the tyrant’s impulse. It is what compels
us to plan the lives of others, to hold over them the law – the threat of force
– that they might submit to our will.
It is why Aristotle called politics the “master science”;
because a politics without limits can use the law to compel or assist anything
it chooses.
But Americans once knew better. We declared that, in fact,
politics was no master science, but a science limited by the rights of man –
our right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Every man and woman
was to be the master of themselves, to live out their lives together as was to
their profit and pleasure.
Many of us still believe this truth, but some have come to
challenge it. Foremost among these are the sort exemplified by Mark Leno.
The Bay Area Democratic state senator has picked his war,
and his opponent is the electronic cigarette.
Yes, indeed: The smokeless vaporizer products that, in study
after study, have been shown to produce minimal harm to the user – certainly
many orders of magnitude less than the traditional cigarette, to which it is
often unjustly compared; the same products that have not been shown to act as a
gateway to smoking and have performed as well or better than accepted
“cessation” products like nicotine gum or patches.
These are the products Sen. Leno has set his sights on. And
while his initial effort was stifled earlier this month by a bipartisan
committee vote, he has reupped the fight with Senate Bill 5 X2, so oddly named
because it is being brought in an “extraordinary session” of the Legislature.
These are generally single-issue sessions where numerous bills revolving around
a single subject are considered in sequence.
What Mr. Leno aims to do, against all reason, is classify
e-cigarettes as “tobacco products,” bringing them under a regulatory
designation shared by the traditional cigarette. They are, of course, not
tobacco products at all. There is no tobacco leaf, no smoke from lighting
anything on fire; the only similarity, it seems, is that e-cigarettes sometimes
contain nicotine.
These restrictions would limit the areas of use and place
financial burdens on producers and store owners. Further, these burdens would
shift production to those who can afford to pay: Big Tobacco, companies that
entered the market late but having recently been launching their own products
and getting a foothold in the industry.
So, in all, Mr. Leno’s proposal acts the enemy to liberty,
demonizes a healthier alternative to cigarettes and pushes profit centers
toward already-wealthy megacorporations.
Get your favorite e-juice at www.vulcan-vapor.com
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