Supreme Foolishness
Copyright © 2000 by Dave Badtke
While the 9 justices of the Supreme Court may be the high priests of our secular religion, of which the Constitution is the bible, their recent decision to end the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of smoking smells like a dirty ashtray.
By a 5 to 4 vote, the Court decided that the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act could not be used by the FDA to assert jurisdiction over tobacco products. In effect, the majority opinion stated that the FDA could not restrict the sale of cigarettes to children and teenagers, because it hadn’t asked Congress for permission. The majority added that they were sorry for the "… thousands of premature deaths that occur each year because of tobacco use," but it was now up to Congress to decide how tobacco should be regulated.
Right. As if that’s going to happen with deep-pocket tobacco lobbyists swarming in Washington like hornworms, flea beetles and cutworms in a tobacco field. (Where’s McCain when we need him?)
I just don’t buy it. At one point in the legal word battle, with turgid phrases flying between majority and minority opinions, the Majority implied that tobacco products are so bad for our Nation’s health that if the FDA were doing its job properly, it would have already banned them. Since it hadn’t banned them, it couldn’t now regulate them.
(House Majority Leader Trent Lott, to his penultimate discredit, quickly sided with the I-always-thought-the-FDA-wasn’t-doing-a-proper-job contingent, which never passes up an opportunity to disparage a federal agency. In this case, though, the FDA hadn’t done something – ban tobacco – which Lott didn’t want it to do. Good luck following the logic in that.)
To me, the whole decision smells like a cigar in an air-tight room. It would have made more sense if the Majority had decided that smoking wasn’t eating, taking drugs or putting on makeup, in which case the FDA would have had no business mucking around in the affairs of nicotine addicts.
While it’s true that a smoker puts a cigarette into his mouth, it’s not as though he’s eating the smoke that he draws into his lungs, the same smoke that will eventually make him cough, give him lung cancer or emphysema, and kill him, if he doesn’t die first. Food, on the other hand, goes into your stomach, makes you full and sleepy, a little giddy if you’re drinking wine, and eventually makes you fat if you’re a profligate calorie consumer. Obviously, smoking isn’t eating, and tobacco products aren’t food.
But the FDA contended tobacco was a drug because of the addictive properties of nicotine.
Okay. Maybe. But there are just so many other things that are just as addictive that the FDA doesn’t seem at all interested in regulating: gambling; TV soap operas and programs, like Jerry Springer’s, that celebrate sadistic sexuality, dysfunctional families and societal mayhem; first-person-shooter computer games; divorce; MTV; handguns and assault rifles; professional wrestling; all sports, especially football and basketball; bigger and fatter cars; lottery tickets, etc., etc..
Are all of these also drugs? Come on, give me a break. They’re the American way of life.
And to think that smoking is similar to using makeup is a stretch except when you consider the yellowing of fingers and teeth and the leathery skin and wan complexion that obtain after years of smoking. Disgusting, perhaps, but not the equivalent of facial blush. Certainly smoking isn’t a cosmetic.
And there you have it. Rather than read the tortured logic of the Court’s majority opinion, just accept that the FDA had no business regulating smoking in the first place, which, unfortunately, leaves young people gasping in the tight grip of the tobacco industry. Since it won’t help to wait for our ossified Congress to act, an activity as productive as watching Mount Diablo move – consider gun control one year after Littleton – some other agency will have to take on tobacco regulation.
At a time like this, we should turn to Oscar Wilde. In "The Importance of Being Earnest," Lady Bracknell asks John Worthing, who really is Earnest, if he smokes. John reluctantly admits that he does, to which Lady Bracknell says: "I am glad to hear it. A man should always have an occupation of some kind."
A brilliant solution. Smoking could become a hazardous occupation like working in a coal mine. We could be at full employment, which would make Greenspan nervous and cause stock prices to plummet, except for tobacco stocks. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration would have regulatory control and would immediately initiate safe-smoking campaigns.
I can already see the banners on America’s billboards: "Cigarettes don’t kill people – inhaling does. Just say no to smoke."
Wouldn’t it be wonderful?
- Dave Badtke is founder of the developing Carquinez Review literary journal. Find him on the web at www.CarquinezReview.com.
Contact him at:
Dave@CarquinezReview.com or Dave@Badtke.com