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Won't Someone Think of the Nicotine Addicted Children?

Oct 10, 2008
By .
Politics & Current Events

The put upon few over at Phillip Morris have a message for the City of San Francisco: "stop limiting our Civil Rights." I tell you, San Francisco has a lot of nerve. You see, starting October 1st any business that called itself a drugstore was no longer allowed to sell cigarettes. Not surprisingly, cigarette companies were not big fans of this ruling, and fought for a restraining order. Walgreens also got in the act, claiming in it's filing that the act was discrimination against drug stores.

Both were unsuccessful, although there is another hearing on October 30th to decide if an injunction is necessary. Now, I don't want to come off biased here, but good! I am all for anything that restricts tobacco companies, and this law (the first of it's kind in the US) is a good step. To be clear, the law does weasel out and exempt grocery stores and big box stores that have Pharmacies in them.

The civic minded folks at Phillip Morris argued that this law infringed upon their freedom of speech, limiting their ability to communicate with their customers. Putting aside that those seem like two very different arguments to me, they are both specious at best. They can choose to advertise their products in the stores, they just can't sell them. If they make the business decision not to do so, that is not related to the law. As to the free speech issue, I don't want to get all Jeffersonian here, but do corporations really have a right to free speech? Do they even have rights at all? This certainly underscores my belief that treating corporations like individuals is a huge mistake.

Let's be clear, this really has nothing to do with drug stores, it is mainly targetting Walgreens and its ilk. These stores have essentially become supermarkets, but they continue to refer to themselves as drugstores or pharmacies for tax purposes. San Francisco saw an opportunity to regulate the sale of tobacco and took it. Still, it looks like this law will stand (especially if cigarette companies keep arguing that their rights are being hindered..) and could lead to copy cat measures across the country. It's funny, but I have lived in California for so long that I forget that there are still "smoking sections" in some places (although those are getting rarer and rarer, thank goodness..)

Last 5 posts by Ezra

5 Comments
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5 Comments

  1. dave  •  Oct 15, 2008 @11:36 am

    Not that you necessarily fall in the category, but how can people support marijuana legalization, but tobacco prohibition?

  2. Patrick  •  Oct 15, 2008 @1:04 pm

    The addictive power of marijuana is, for most if not all users, a trifling thing compared to that of tobacco. Marijuana use is a choice for most. For many tobacco smokers, only the initial uses are by choice.

  3. dave  •  Oct 15, 2008 @1:45 pm

    The addictive nature of tobacco is widely overstated. Cigarettes?

    Probably overstated, but I couldn't tell you the degree.

    Regardless, high fructose corn syrup is a greater threat to society than tobacco at this point.

  4. Patrick  •  Oct 15, 2008 @2:08 pm

    I don't know what "widely overstated" means Dave, but I do know, from personal experience and from conversations with many others, that quitting a habit is sheer agony.

    That's my empirical data. What's yours?

  5. dave  •  Oct 16, 2008 @6:28 am

    Both parents quit smoking without patches or drug intervention. Brother smokes casually. I smoke cigars without cravings or need to have one (once every couple of months.) As I understand it, the levels of smoking have fallen significantly even in absolute numbers though it may have plateaued, so, it's clearly beatable if someone wants to.

    I'm not saying it's not addictive, nor am I saying that regulation of nicotine levels is a terrible idea. It's a habit that can be kicked just like overeating, lack of excercise, gaming, sex, or alcohol. Running 5 miles a day would drastically improve our physical health. But that seems to be more agony than quitting smoking ;)

    It also kills me that due to 1 bad implementation (cigarettes) that we use our broad brush to assault the relatively benign use of cigars and pipes in the process.