Free Us From The Tyranny Of Tobacco And Its Effects

I must applaud the Minnesota Government on making a noble action by banning a grocery store from being a participant in WIC, a subsidy program for the poor when the store charged a pack of cigarettes to the voucher program. The state and federal laws addressed are obviously justified as they are acting to protect the right to life of Americans. Perhaps the sale was a mistake on the part of the cashier but I have heard of schemes that are very similar to this event so in order to discourage the dishonest and careless, tough measures are necessary. If it was indeed a scheme then individuals, such as the mother in this case, whom turn in corrupt or careless organizations that misuse this benevolent program should be well rewarded. A sad item this case highlights is that there are people that believe welfare is a right and not a gift of charity.

The ACLU of course weighs in on the tobacco issue with their right to privacy and lifestyle discrimination. Most everyone else refers to the later as the right to liberty, but then they are not attempting to push the homosexual lifestyle either. John Locke answers that charge with the following words.

But though this be a state of liberty, yet it is not a state of license: though man in that state have an uncontrollable liberty to dispose of his person or possessions, yet he has not liberty to destroy himself, or so much as any creature in his possession, but where some nobler use than its bare preservation calls for it.

The ACLU;s charge that places of employment have no business regulating what you do when off the job because of your right to privacy is correct as far as it goes. The right of places of employment to regulate their employees self destructive actions begin when those action effect the job such as an alcoholic coming to work drunk or the significant effect of added health cost, increased absences and decreased performance suffered by smokers and overweight individuals.

Remember the ACLU is pro drug legalization and tobacco according to them is just another drug. They believe that the negative repercussions of a drug are no business of the government of the People to regulate despite knowing that according to the Virginia Bill of Rights written a month prior to the Declaration of Independence and the foundation of the Bill of Rights in the Constitution that the following is true.

That no free government, or the blessing of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue, and by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.

From these documents upon which our foreparents based the free government we were promised we know that legalizing self destructive behavior such as smoking tobacco is not an exercise of freedom as the ACLU preaches but is instead an exercise of corruption and tyranny.