Demoned Weed

My father would not have taken kindly to being portrayed as an innocent victim of the tobacco industry. He knew smoking was bad for him. My aunt was a healthcare professional. Think she didn't know? I quit smoking a few years ago, after roughly 30 years. Think I didn't know that it was killing me?

People have known that tobacco is injurious at least since its adoption by the Europeans 400 years ago. Any smoker today who tells you he didn't know it was killing him is a liar or an idiot.

The popularity of the fairy tale in which Demon Philip Morris pins innocent victims to the ground and forces them to smoke cigarette after cigarette until they die is another example of the way Americans enjoy infantilizing themselves and shirking responsibility for their own lives. Last week's $144 billion award of damages will do little to end smoking; in fact, by supporting a smokers' victim culture and championing an image of them as helpless dupes and drug addicts, it effectively condones smoking. (If Weed is so powerful, and the smoker so weak, how can they be expected to quit?) What it will do is pour millions more dollars into the pockets of the lawyers on both sides. Tort reform, anyone?

Government can't have it both ways. If we know tobacco is a deadly drug, why has government not simply banned it? Is that not a moral imperative? Instead, it collects regressive "sin taxes" and plays the passive-aggressive bystander; but when the industry finally chokes to death in legal fees, watch politicians from both sides leap forward to claim credit for having saved their constituents from this evil blight. Conversely, if we're going to allow and tax tobacco, why not legalize marijuana and tax it, too? A happy citizenry, a new revenue stream and the end of a criminal black market: everyone wins.

Smokers are not passive victims, like those injured by environmental toxins. I quit smoking. Every smoker can. It's hard. So is getting up on Monday mornings. It's something you have to do. Smokers who don't quit know they have only themselves to blame if it kills them?legal precedents and gooey victim culture notwithstanding.