Chapter 10
Reflections of a smoking tourist
"Her Majesty is a confirmed non-smoker, but she is also a great libertarian and has no time for political correctness." - An unnamed Buckingham Palace source.
In early June of 2007, I went off to England and Ireland for a holiday, as they call it over there. This was my first trip abroad. I had always wanted to visit both countries, and this was the time to go since in England smoking in all public places including pubs was soon to be banned. When I arrived at Gatwick airport outside of London, the customs officer asked what was the purpose of my visit? I responded, To beat your smoking ban. He chuckled, stamped my passport, said that was as good a reason as any, and welcomed me to the UK. I stopped at the little area at Gatwick airport that is set aside for smokers and lit up from a pack of State Express 555. It is an English cigarette I purchased back in the States. I can remember the seal of Great Britain on packs of 555s years ago. And next to the seal was the message: By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen. That was no longer the case. The British government no longer allows tobacco producers to be the official vendors to the Royal Family. As I was sitting there with the other smokers, a man walked by saying, Smoke up, folks, because on July 1 it will all be over. I felt the love. July 1, 2007 was the date the smoking ban would go into effect. Given the fact that Parliament banned fox hunting in 2004, an activity that seems to cause harm only to the fox, it should not have come as a surprise that smoking would one day be banned.
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The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State
By Theodore J. KingOr order at I Universe
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Theodore King has done a yeoman's job assembling evidence that the success of tobacco zealots has become a useful template for those who want to use health issues to control our lives. The War on Smokers is not only a story about the attack on tobacco users but a story about how decent Americans can be frightened, perhaps duped into accepting phony science, attacks on private property rights and rule of law. One need not be a smoker to be alarmed by the underlying hideousness of the anti-tobacco movement.
About Theodore King
Walter E. Williams
John M. Olin Distinguished
Professor of Economics
George Mason University
Theodore J. King is an Oklahoma native who graduated from Northeastern State University in 1996. He spent a summer at the Republican National Committee in 1994, worked at the National Right to Work Committee, and spent time working on the Hill in Washington D.C. In 1999, he was a temporay employee with Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas and later worked for the Media Research Center in Alexandria, Virginia. He served as our Washington D.C. correspondent for our From Washington page before returning to Oklahoma in 2001, and continues his reports with The Federal Page.
The Oklahoma Constitution
“The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State”
One of our Own Documents the Trilogy, and What We Should Do About It
August 28, 2009
By: J. Glynn Loope, Executive Director
In the young life of Cigar Rights of America, it's a special moment when you can say “a CRA member has published a book” – about anything - much less a book on what is fundamentally the mission and work of CRA. Of course, Theodore J. King didn't know that CRA was being created when he was undertaking his research for his book, but he does now.
Ted King has published what can only be characterized as a manifesto for our membership. Through his book “The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State,” he not only addresses the modern day drama that surrounds the attempts to facilitate prohibition of tobacco, but the historic context of this issue we each confront as cigar enthusiasts. King takes us back to 1632 when it was illegal in Massachusetts to smoke within five miles of any town [21 st century Mayor of Boston Tom Menino must have been catching up on his history when he recently facilitated a ban on outdoor smoking.]
We wonder though if King's book could plant some thoughts that modern day nannies have not considered. For instance, he writes that in 1633 Turkish Sultan Murad would have you executed for smoking in public, and Russian Czar Alexis in 1634 would have you publicly whipped, nose slit or shipped off to Siberia for tobacco use. In 1674 Russia , it had moved to death for a first offense. He expounds on the anti-tobacco rules of Nazi Germany, and related international efforts to ban use of tobacco.
King then walks us through the efforts in modern America to ban smoking, coupled with the hypocrisy and down right silly approach many states have taken to pass such legislation. He does so through a well researched approach to noting the serious contradictions in health studies, and the means by which the health-based non profits manipulate statistics to meet their needs. He further does an outstanding job of documenting the [actual] adverse economic impact of smoking bans, as well as the approaches states take to tobacco taxation, that actually results in less money coming into public coffers.
Ted King allows us to travel with him in these pages on his trip through Europe , and their approach and the subsequent impact of smoking bans. He notes the dramatic closure of pubs, and the diminished atmosphere that was such a part of the culture in England , Scotland and Ireland .
King does a methodical job of documenting the contradictions, flawed methodologies, and hidden facts surrounding studies produced by the American Cancer Society, Centers for Disease Control, and the Surgeon General's Report. When he confronts those behind these studies and public proclamations, he gets a simple “oops.”
He also does a masterful job of highlighting the extremes of the anti-tobacco movement. From evicting nursing home tenants for smoking outside, to the ability to call 911 to report someone smoking in a community near you - stories that in any other time would be a work of fiction, but are unfortunately true.
He rightly notes that this is just the beginning. “They” are on their way to wanting to regulate food and weight. Just to make we cigar enthusiasts feel better, he highlights efforts to regulate fast food establishments through local zoning (a concept in Alexandria , Virginia for smoking) and legislation in Mississippi that would have prevented food service at a restaurant if you were deemed overweight.
King also presents his ideas on addressing the future. Such concepts as establishing smokers' clubs, acts of civil disobedience, politically organizing bars and related establishments, and related compromises that are actually solutions that have been proposed by CRA in recent battles.
Ted King has placed between the cover of his book a wonderful overview of what we confront on a daily basis, as well as a review of “how it can be worse,” and what can be done to stem the tide of lost freedom. His sarcasm and direct affronts to noted and current political leaders only dramatize the passion that he shares with us – and he's a member of Cigar Rights of America.
On a personal note, I was determined to have a cigar throughout the entire reading. It's a “5-7 cigar” book.
CRA is proud to offer autographed versions of Ted King's book, The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State, to those that purchase a three-year membership in CRA.
http://www.cigarrights.org
The War on Smoking and the Rise of the Nanny State • by Theodore J. King (NY: iUniverse, 2008)
Reviewed by Mark Irwin (mark@afinemess.org)
"When people begin to accept dictates from governments of what they are not supposed to say and do, for their own and collective good, they begin to forget all the liberties that previous generations knew. The Nannies are out to remake our society, and smokers are their lab rats" ( The War on Smoking , p. 61).
Theodore J. King describes himself as "an avid pipe smoker" (p. 103) but he obviously smokes cigarettes as well. In his profession as a political journalist and newspaperman, he's in a unique position to size up what's going on with smokers' rights across the globe, and the news is, to say the least, disheartening. In easy-going, bright and humorous prose, he piles on story after story, all thoroughly documented, as he gives us a brief history of anti-smoking laws (including some interesting references to the Third Reich), followed by who the anti-smokers are, the effects of smoking bans on business world-wide, the sad state of smoking in Europe, and finally some possible solutions that are already in place in various parts of the country.
"Nannyism," of course, has been around for a long time in one form or another as long as there have been governments big enough to be infected by it. I first felt its razor claws back in the 90s with the first big push of the PC crowd. At no less a citadel of democracy than Thomas Jefferson's own University of Virginia, there was big talk about the health hazards of--I kid you not--coffee! Now the cupojoe is on a fairly equal footing for me with the sacred pipe, and I remember having several conversations about the possibility of life on other planets, because I sure wasn't going to stay on this one without coffee. Caffeine was proclaimed one of the great killers, and people who used it were held in a special kind of abhorrence by quite a number of faculty members and students. For a time, it even looked like the student canteen was going to quit selling this elixir of life. Fortunately, at about that time, there was a little coffee company from Seattle that became huge when they decided not to sell just beans, but coffee drinks as well, and whether it was their economic clout or just the common sense of John Q. Citizen, the mania against coffee subsided.
As King's book hummed along, I began to get a Ray Bradbury or Kurt Vonnegutish sci-fi feeling rising in my gorge. I could almost hear him with Rod Serling accents--like reality had just moved into the Twilight Zone. And I think that is part of the point King is making: to preserve individual liberties, not for the sake of cigarette smokers, but for all of us, we need to be pro-active. We can't be the fabled frog-in-the-pot who plashes around as the temperature rises, scalding us and our hobby to death: "We are giving government too much power over how we live our lives. The war on smokers is a big part of that rise of government intervention, and it is the one that enjoys the most public support or apathy because it affects a relatively small percentage of the population" (90).
I suspect that, like King, most pipemen are more interested in being morally correct than politically correct, and I think the day has arrived when we need to find our voice and be pro-active about our hobby. One of the premises of the book, as King repeats time and again, is that "the people who want to ban smoking are not going to stop with banning smoking. They are always going to look for and find an 'emerging health threat.' If they don't, they will be forced to close their doors and look for work in the real world" (p. 82).
We first need to promote the genuine health facts surrounding the pipe and dissociate them from the legitimate health hazards of cigarettes. Simultaneously, we need to promote our hobby's documented health benefits: responsible use leads to lower stress and longer life, to name but two of the most important. 1 But we also need to take ideas like International Pipe-Smoking Day ( www.ipsd.edu ) and flesh them out so that our hobby is seen as something healthy, positive, and American. If you want to see how this can be done, take a look at what the American craft-beer movement has done since the late 1980s. We now have the absolute finest craft-beer industry in the world, routinely making beers far ahead of what's happening in England, Germany, or Belgium. I don't see anyone lobbying against Samuel Adams on Capitol Hill.
Part of the problem we face is that, as pipe smokers, we tend to be (excuse the stereotype) a quieter and gentler lot than either cigar or cigarette smokers. But we need to take our cue from King, "a thinking man" who not only smokes a Peterson pipe (p. 99), but is working to effect solutions to preserve our liberty to do so. We need to begin using our collective wisdom to preserve what unites us--our passion for pipes and tobaccos. To that end, hats off to Theodore J. King for bringing the issues into focus.
See Kevin Boyd's "Summary Notes from the lecture of Henri P. Gaboriau M.D.," March 2002 (Seattle Pipe Club, www.seattlepipeclub.org ) and the famous US Surgeon General's report, "Smoking and Health" (No. 1103, page 112), available for download on the internet.
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Tucker Carlson
Government efforts to fight cigarette smoking over the past 40 years amount to more than a victory for public health. They are also, as Ted King's new book makes clear, a cautionary tale of how the state can bully, and ultimately crush, members of a momentarily-unfashionable minority group. Just because you don't smoke doesn't mean you shouldn't be afraid.Walter Williams, Ph.D
Theodore King has done a yeoman's job assembling evidence that the success of tobacco zealots has become a useful template for those who want to use health issues to control our lives. The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State is not only a story about the attack on tobacco users but a story about how decent Americans can be frightened, perhaps duped into accepting phony science, attacks on private property rights and rule of law. One need not be a smoker to be alarmed by the underlying hideousness of the anti-tobacco movement.Jack Cashill
Ted King's enlightening and engaging book, The War on Smokers and the Rise of the Nanny State, has a compound title but a consistent theme. The war on smokers has to be seen not as an isolated bit of do-goodism, but as one front out of many in the war on personal liberty. King manages to strike just the right tone in sounding the wake up call to his fellow citizens. He delights in stripping away the Nanny drag and showing the anti-smoking movement as the embryonic monster it is.
