Michael Perelman asks:
>True enough, but don't the adverse consequences of tobacco hit the
>working-class
>harder? So, discouraging smoking by taxes might have positive
>consequences over the
>long run.
>
>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> Hey, sin taxes hit the working class harder than the rich. So why
> > not chuck tobacco taxers out of the window, too?
Naturally, given my choice of vice (coffee & cigarettes), I'm rather
prejudiced, so take it with a grain of salt....
I think that discouragement had better come from education & peer
pressure, rather than taxes & cops, on questions of health, both
under capitalism & socialism, but especially under capitalism.
Regulations of health, depending on how regulations are practiced,
can create a medium for social control (the creation of healthy,
docile, & productive bodies & populations). There is a fertile
ground for retrenchment of gender oppression here also, through
regulations of pregnant women (with regard to drug use [medical or
recreational], smoking, alcohol consumption, etc.), for instance.
So, I'd urge American leftists (who have a soft spot for moral
concerns about health) to go easy on, nay, become at times skeptical
of, (what I think is a misappropriation of the Latin phrase) "Mens
sana in corpore sano" in American political discourse.
Did Gorbachev not launch Perestroika with an assault on vodka?
Yoshie
