Jump to full article: Jamestown (ND) Sun, 2009-07-21
Author: The Forum, The Jamestown Sun
Intro: As North Dakota’s voter-mandated tobacco control committee begins its work, the debate about rights and choices is heating up again.
Let us stress: Mandated by voters last November as they easily approved ballot Measure 3. Let us stress: Mandated by voters who reacted angrily when a cadre of no-nothing legislators attempted and failed to gut the measure’s provisions.
Regarding “rights”: No one’s right to smoke has been taken away. However, North Dakota, Minnesota and nearly everywhere else have limited smoking to locations where other people’s health is not threatened by the habit. It’s the old argument: The right to throw a punch ends at the other fellow’s nose. Secondhand smoke is a punch that can’t be pulled back. . . .
It’s not about the “nanny state” or taking away rights. Tobacco policy has been evolving for four decades, culminating with irrefutable evidence that smoking and secondhand smoke are insidious health hazards. As knowledge increased, so did the call for regulation. As behavior of the tobacco companies was exposed, they lost what small measure of trust they had with the public.
Regulation has not come from some ivory-tower government bureaucracy. It’s come from voters. Since the men and women who allegedly represent North Dakotans have refused to do the right thing, the new committee should put a comprehensive statewide ban on the ballot and let voters make the call.
Jump to full article » |