The flavor of choice
At what point will we finally be safe? I ask because, despite federal and state penal codes that address every imaginable crime — and some that most could never conceive — and regulations drummed up to address the latest hazards of society, it appears that there is still room for more. Yes, we and our children could be much safer, if only we could be made to be safer.
Thankfully, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has taken a bold new step in protecting our children from themselves and preventing the creation of a whole new race of addicts. It banned flavored cigarettes.
Now, I’m an unlikely person to be defending cigarettes in any way, and I’m not defending cigarettes. I was a smoker beginning in my teens until I was about 29 when I replaced the habit with an exercise fixation. It was one of the best things I ever did.
I started smoking the old-fashioned way, with a pack of Winston’s. So did most of my friends. It didn’t take a peppermint smoke to get me hooked. Nonetheless, I can understand that kids with more of a sweet tooth than me could be initially drawn to choke down a smoke if it’s got a little something to mask the gag of tobacco. Some kids are more drawn to smoke than they would be if it they were just straight-up, ordinary butts.
That may be true, and there are few things more encouraging than having fewer young people smoking. It is a genuine scourge. But the banning of flavored cigarettes is a prime example of trying to
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regulate every ill out of society. It seems absurd that, with the majority of Americans over 18 years old, people won’t be able to buy a flavored smoke on the premise that kids will have to smoke the unflavored variety if they want to get hooked.
Believe me, some kids will smoke flavored or unflavored cigarettes, until the dwindling young social groups that still see it as cool finally fade out of existence. It’s why education — and not just the kind handed down from bureaucrats — is the answer. It doesn’t try to remove the choice, it aims to have people make better choices.
While there are hundreds of dangers we’ve regulated, many of which we’ve regulated straight into criminal enterprises, there are a thousand more dangers that lie ahead. The question is not the flavored cigarette. The question is whether we will try to restrict access to every ill, even for people perfectly able to choose for themselves, in an effort to protect everyone.
Because if we should regulate all of those ills, let me recommend the next target: Sugary cereals that make kids fat and rot their teeth. Then we can tackle soda and fast food. And boyfriends. And skateboards.
Or we can go the slow road and continue to show kids how to choose wisely — presuming they will still be able to choose at all.
John Driscoll/The Times-Standard
09/28/2009
