Quando non sono impegnati a bandire il tabacco stanno bandendo i grassi transgenici. Quando non bandiscono i grassi transgenici lo fanno con le bibite in formato maxi. E se bocciano il bando delle bibite, il loro prossimo obiettivo sono le sigarette elettroniche. “Per la salute pubblica!” è la forma moderna di “Ho visto Sarah Good con il demonio! Ho visto Good Osburn con il demonio! Ho visto Bridget Bishop con il demonio!”

Se non credete a me, credete ai politici che hanno votato l’estensione del bando del fumo fino a farlo diventare “non fuma, ma sembra che fumi se sei proprio, proprio, proprio stupido”.

Il portavoce del consiglio cittadino Christine Quinn non cita preoccupazioni vere e proprie per la salute quando spiega il suo supporto al bando delle sigarette elettroniche. Semplicemente asserisce, invece, che sarà più difficile applicare il divieto di fumare se non è al tempo stesso illegale fare qualcosa che un poliziotto cieco, sordo e mentalmente ritardato, che in quel momento è fatto di crack, potrebbe scambiare per fumo.

Poiché questa giustificazione è chiaramente abborracciata, svela la ragione vera: “Pochissime persone si sentono a disagio quando dici che non possono fumare in pubblico. Noi su questo non vogliamo indietreggiare.” In altre parole, se non mettono al bando le sigarette elettroniche i newyorchesi potrebbero ricredersi sulla possibilità che Christine Quinn gestisca la loro vita. Attenzione, Will Robinson! Attenzione!

Il consigliere James Gennaro e il membro della “commissione salute” Thomas A. Farley parlano dell’assenza di un bando delle esalazioni di vapore contenente un quinto del potenziale tossico del “fumo di seconda mano” come di una scappatoia. “Vediamo che queste sigarette (sic) stanno cominciando a diffondersi, e questo è inaccettabile,” dice Gennaro. Mi dicono di persone che fumano queste sigarette (sic – non sono sigarette, e non vengono ‘fumate’, quello che vuole dire davvero è ‘Mi dicono di persone che vivono la loro vita senza consultarmi e genuflettersi davanti a me’) nelle biblioteche pubbliche. Di sicuro si stanno diffondendo nei ristoranti e nei bar.”

Ovviamente non è giusto attribuire tutto ciò unicamente ai complessi di onnipotenza di sociopatici come Quinn, Gennaro e Farley. Di mezzo ci sono anche i soldi. Molti soldi: 1,50 dollari in tasse per ogni pacchetto di sigarette “vere” vendute legalmente (circa il 60% delle sigarette sono contrabbandate per schivare i più che entusiasti passatori della città: i politici), più tutto quello che lo stato riesce a convogliare dai 4,35 dollari a pacchetto verso le tasche di Quinn, Gennaro e compagni.

È una questione di controllo. È una questione di soldi. Quel che è più che certo è che non ha niente a che vedere con la “salute pubblica”.

Questo non significa che le sigarette elettroniche sono senza rischi. È probabile di no: i pochi studi fatti finora suggeriscono che potrebbero esserci rischi minori (un intero ordine di grandezza meno severi di quelli associati alle sigarette “reali”).

Ma è fuori da ogni ragionevole dubbio che le sigarette elettroniche siano più sicure del tabacco. Così come non c’è dubbio che le sigarette elettroniche siano tra gli strumenti più efficaci per uscire dal vizio. Questo è un colpo duro ai fondi neri di Quinn e Gennaro: 1,50 dollari in meno per ogni pacchetto non fumato. Significa che il guinzaglio che Quinn e Gennaro e Co. hanno faticato tanto a mettere al collo dei newyorchesi si allenterà un po’, almeno fino al prossimo bando.

I newyorchesi hanno tutto da perdere dalla messa al bando delle sigarette elettroniche. E tutto da guadagnare dalla scomparsa dei “loro” amministratori cittadini.

Traduzione di Enrico Sanna.

When they’re not banning tobacco they’re banning trans-fats. When they’re not banning trans-fats they’re banning large soft drinks. And when their soft drink ban gets quashed, their next target is electronic cigarettes. “For the public health!” is the new “I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Good Osburn with the devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!”

If you don’t believe me, believe the politicians who voted to extend the city’s smoking ban to “not smoking, but kind of looks like smoking if you’re really, really, really stupid.”

City Council Speaker Christine Quinn doesn’t cite any actual health concerns in explaining her support for the ban on “vaping.” Rather she simply asserts that it will be harder to enforce the actual smoking ban if it’s not also illegal to do something a blind, deaf, mentally challenged cop who happens to be high on crack at the moment might mistake for smoking.

That justification being obviously sketchy, she retreats to her real reason: “Very few people feel uncomfortable now saying you can’t smoke in public. We don’t want to step backwards in that.” In other words, not banning e-cigarettes might cause New Yorkers to re-think letting Christine Quinn run their lives. Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!

Councilman James Gennaro and “Health Commissioner” Thomas A. Farley refer to the absence of a ban on exhalations of vapor containing 1/5 the potentially toxic content of “second-hand smoke” as a “loophole.” “We see these cigarettes [sic] are really starting to proliferate, and it’s unacceptable,” says Gennaro. “I get reports of people smoking cigarettes [sic — they’re not cigarettes, they’re not “smoked,” and what he really means is “I get reports of people living their lives without consulting, and genuflecting before, me”] in public libraries. Certainly, they’re becoming more common in restaurants and bars.”

But of course it’s not fair to attribute all this solely to the control complexes of sociopaths like Quinn, Gennaro and Farley. There’s also money involved. Big money — $1.50 in city taxes on every pack of “real” cigarettes legally sold (about 60% of cigarettes are smuggled in to avoid the city’s most enthusiastic muggers, its politicians), plus whatever portion of the $4.35 per pack state tax gets piped through to Quinn, Gennaro and Company.

It’s about control. It’s about money. What it most certainly is not even a little bit about is “public health.”

That’s not to say that e-cigarettes are “risk-free.” They may not be; the few studies done so far suggest that there may be minor (a full order of magnitude less severe than those associated with “real” cigarettes) risks involved.

But there’s no reasonable doubt whatsoever that electronic cigarettes are safer than smoke tobacco. Nor is there any doubt at all that electronic cigarettes are among the most effective ways of getting smokers to stop smoking tobacco — dinging the Quinn/Gennaro slush fund by $1.50+ per pack of cigarettes not smoked, and until the passage of the new ban, ever so slightly loosening the dog collars that Quinn/Gennaro and Company have spent so many years putting around every New Yorker’s neck.

New Yorkers will be worse off for the electronic cigarette ban. And they’d be a lot better off without “their” city government.

Translations for this article:

• Spanish, Los Nazis de la Nicotina Atacan Nueva York.
• Italian, Nazismo Nicotinico.

Our betters in the Food and Drug Administration know better. They know what my teachers and peers did not, and are prepared to implement a nationwide cookie-cutter pain management plan for every single one of three hundred million Americans. In their infinite wisdom, they have decided to make hydrocodone/acetaminophen combinations — the most well-known of which is Vicodin — harder to come by and to require patients to see their doctors — and pay for an office visit, of course — every time they need a refill of these fairly mild drugs.

And mild drugs they are. Opioid pain killers are measured by how they compare to morphine taken orally. Hydrocodone is 1.5 times as potent as oral morphine, which compares very poorly to some of our modern pain killers, such as hydromorphone (Dilaudid) — five times as potent — and fentanyl, which delivered via patch on the skin is eighty times as potent as morphine. And in Vicodin, a mere 5mg of this weak tea opioid is combined with a standard, over the counter dose of acetaminophen (Tylenol) to provide a pretty mild analgesic effect.

But of course it’s not their pain relieving power that concerns our betters. The real issue is that some people use these pills to feel good, and sometimes go too far and suffer for it. No one is shoving pills down anyone’s throat. These unfortunates are taking the pills because they want to, because medicating themselves into oblivion seems like their best option. But in true progressive fashion, rather than wonder what it is about the suffocating state capitalist system that drives people to such fates, our betters in the FDA would rather plunge even more innocents into misery in the name of preventing a few of their victims from using chemicals to escape for a little while.

We can tell it’s pleasure that is the problem, as some of the most dangerous drugs on the market are available freely over the counter even to small children. Tylenol, for instance, sends 80,000 people to the emergency room every year, but it does not make anyone high, so it does not draw the interest of our Puritan masters.

Among the dangers lurking in the doctor’s office and the hospital Vicodin still does not impress — the most lethal thing that happens in our health care system is not people getting high but doctors and nurses screwing up. 98,000 of our fellow Americans die from simple mistakes every year, mistakes often made by overworked nursing staff on inadequately staffed floors run at a substantial profit by politically connected businesses and executives paying themselves absurd salaries. But this too does not exercise our progressive friends, as that most insidious of dangers — people feeling good — is not here lurking.

No, our progressive friends in the FDA and the Obama administration want to save you from the danger that you might use a chemical to feel good, might like the experience, and might want to repeat it. And they will not even blink at the thought of trampling over the care of people in pain to stop us from getting high. Suffering, after all, purifies the soul, while demon pleasures tempt us away from the puritan, progressive path.