Social Justice Warriors

Brookline Nanny State Outlawing Cigarettes Because They Hate Freedom

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Remember back when the town of Westminster tried to ban cigarette sales and all hell broke loose? Board of Health member Andrea Crete found out the hard way that when you try to limit people’s freedoms, even if those freedoms could eventually kill them, the people will revolt. Because America is all about freedom, and no one loves America more than this local boob right here:

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But that was Westminster, a rural town in Worcester County. Everything inside of the 495 belt is like a different world though. There are TONS of municipalities to the east who HATE freedom. That’s why the city of Brookline has recently begun discussions about banning the sale of cigarettes within city limits:

John Ross and his wife Megan Sandel are area doctors and see a number of patients with tobacco-related problems. Their warrant article for May’s Town Meeting calls for a ban on the sale of tobacco products to anyone born after 1995. Such a ban would encourage a generation of nonsmokers, they said. In 2014, Brookline raised the smoking age to 21, which some experts say helped lower smoking rates among teenagers at Brookline High School, the TAB reported.

“I would take the position that tobacco is a drug. It’s a defective consumer product. If it were a new consumer product, there is no way that it would be considered [safe for] sale,” he said.

On average a smoker lives 10 years less than a nonsmoker. And tobacco caused more than 480,000 deaths each year (including deaths from secondhand smoke), according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Massachusetts, tobacco use contributes to the death of 9,300 people and costs $4.08 billion in health care bills each year, according to activist campaign group Tobacco Free Kids, which led a march last month at the capital. At first, the couple hoped to ban the sale of tobacco to everyone in Brookline. But after some thought they decided to scale back.

“We don’t have any desire to put anybody out of business,” Ross said.

Ross and Sandel are proposing a ban of sales to all persons in Brookline born after 1995, forever. That would mean if you are currently of legal age to smoke, you would still be able to smoke, but if not, you wouldn’t be allowed to start. This would mitigate some of the impact to retailers by decreasing sales by about 2 percent a year, he said, at the same time protecting youth by making it more difficult to start smoking.

dr.-sandel

There’s basically five main reasons that this a stupid idea, which anyone with a brain could understand:

1. It doesn’t stop anything. 

Brookline is one city, in a densely populated urban area. Anyone who wants to buy cigarettes could go into Newton, Boston, Dedham, Needham, or wherever and buy butts there. This solves nothing.

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2. It would kill local businesses. 

Liquor stores and convenience stores see tons of revenue from the sale of cigarettes, all of which would disappear, driving people out of business in the name of the nanny state.

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3. Freedom. 

This is America. And in America if you want to slowly kill yourself and blow your money at the same time, that’s your right. We have stuff like speed limits, not because we are worried about YOU killing yourself, but because we’re worried about you killing other people who don’t treat their lives with such reckless abandon. But if you smoke, you’re pretty much only hurting yourself.

4. The age requirement is idiotic. 

You can sign up to die for your country at 18, but you can’t buy cigarettes in places like Brookline until you’re 21. Makes sense. But if this law gets passed then no one in Brookline born after 1995 will be able to buy cigarettes for the rest of time. So if you’re a 50 year old person in Brookline in 2046, you’re gonna have to pull a “hey mister” and get an elderly person to buy you a pack of Newports. By 2066 stores will be carding the elderly. It’s insane.

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5. What’s next?

Is liquor good for you? Does getting drunk all the time help your liver out? No one ever dies from alcohol related situations right? Oh wait, yes they do. So what’s next? We gonna ban alcohol? Probably.

Anyway, these doctors are obviously well intentioned, but there’s nothing worse than the nanny state. I’ll never smoke a cigarette for the rest of my life unless I’m in a foxhole somewhere in a YOLO-esque situation. But in no way shape or form do I want to try to stop other people from doing the same. Because in America you have the right to be a ratchet, disgusting, smelly human being.

 

 

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33 Comment(s)
  • Joe
    January 27, 2017 at 5:48 pm

    Why does Brookline have two branches on the MBTA Green line, the C and the D line? Meanwhile most of the inner city in Boston, you have use a bus or two buses to get to the closest train station?

  • Maxito
    May 18, 2016 at 4:40 pm

    brookline is the most liberal, backward, irrational town ever. I live there and its pretty fucking nice with the restaurants and shit close to boston but if it weren’t for that the people are some of the most pushy, disgusting, self empowered, libtards ive ever dealt with. Very sheltered people who don’t realize what the real world is like outside of i93

  • Joe Max
    April 13, 2016 at 7:48 pm

    Never happen statewide. Loss of cigarette taxes !

  • Never going back
    April 13, 2016 at 5:53 am

    Brookline is crazy. They also hate chain businesses with a passion. I worked there a few years ago and they decided to pass a law that required all business to stop using plastic bags and cups. That’s why if you go into Brookline you get paper bags and if you go to dunkin donuts they give you a paper cup and not styrofoam. The place is insane.

  • BobnMic
    April 12, 2016 at 11:52 pm

    I love me some FLL!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Yowwww

    • BobnMic
      April 13, 2016 at 12:16 am

      But seriously if I may be for a second FiestyLawyerLady. I’m no longer a club kid either. I play fantasy sports, take a spin on my Harley and observe the very essential essence of stupidity called the internet. Then I laugh. Sometimes get serious then very quickly and as soon as possible go back to being a goof.

      That’s my job. And I have dental.

      • FiestyLawyerLady
        April 13, 2016 at 6:36 pm

        “And I have dental” lol…

        I dabble in Fantasy Baseball!! Well Bob keep at it. I don’t like people who can’t take a good joke! Being serious all of the time is no fun… 🙂

    • anon
      April 14, 2016 at 12:19 am

      Get a room, you two.

      • FiestyLawyerLady
        April 14, 2016 at 6:55 am

        Stop itttttt…. I’m not flirting and neither is he. It’s called being nice! 🙂

  • BobnMic
    April 12, 2016 at 10:55 pm

    hick-up!

  • FiestyLawyerLady
    April 12, 2016 at 10:12 pm

    I smoked a cigarette while I was reading this. I was okay with my decision until the last sentence made me feel like a degenerate. Instead of getting upset, I took one last long drag and blew it out like a ratchet, disgusting, smelly princess!!

    *Sprays perfume, pops a mint…* Ahhhhh…. the taste of slow lingering death. Bwuahaha… no seriously I need to quit soon before my voice changes and I sound like a man, baby!

    • BobnMic
      April 12, 2016 at 10:25 pm

      Switch to weed? You might get more hungry but you will love everybody!

      So I’ve heard.

      • FiestyLawyerLady
        April 12, 2016 at 10:43 pm

        Eh, not my style. I don’t judge, though! I rather get buzzed from some cold beers or shots lol.

        • BobnMic
          April 12, 2016 at 10:54 pm

          Just being a goof. No weed here at the BobnMic camp. Cold beers and shots? FiestyLawyerLady you speak to me…………. 🙂

          • FiestyLawyerLady
            April 12, 2016 at 11:18 pm

            I no longer venture out on the weekends so I find myself staying at home knocking the drinks down on a Fri/Sat while I watch reruns of Sex and the City or Drop Dead Diva (pathetic I know!). I also host a monthly poker night, that’s when my liver is really upset with me lol…

    • April 13, 2016 at 6:12 pm

      Gonna have to start calling you RatchetLawyerLady if you keep this up.

      • FiestyLawyerLady
        April 13, 2016 at 6:33 pm

        It doesn’t roll as smoothly off the tongue, though.

    • UsualSuspect
      UsualSuspect
      April 13, 2016 at 8:36 pm

      That wasn’t fiesty’s picture in the meme I hope!

      • FiestyLawyerLady
        April 14, 2016 at 6:54 am

        Nope! No one here will know what I look like because I don’t post on TB using my facebook. I do this because I don’t want to end up in pieces somewhere in someone’s basement.

        • Feisty redhead
          April 14, 2016 at 12:40 pm

          Good God!

          • FiestyLawyerLady
            April 14, 2016 at 3:36 pm

            Not a redhead… not even close. That’s also not my picture, not even close. I’m also more than a decade younger than 48.

          • FiestyLawyerLady
            April 14, 2016 at 3:38 pm

            Sorry I read that as “Good good” as if to imply I was discovered. Lol.. My apology!

  • Publius
    April 12, 2016 at 5:17 pm

    These same nanny state nimrods are the ones that say marijuana is off course good and heroin is not the junkies fault. Today it is cigarettes and plastic shopping bags. Tomorrow who knows . Anyone sitting smug watch out, cause the nanny state and thought police gonna come for you, watch you gonna do ?

    • Kenny Klitz
      April 12, 2016 at 7:20 pm

      Marijuana is good, you idiot! Do the research.

  • Angus W. Mann
    April 12, 2016 at 1:48 pm

    The article suggests that smokers only hurt themselves and that they should have the freedom to do so. Isn’t it true that smokers hurt other people when they pass on the higher cost of health care through their lifelong death dance with the cancer stick? After all treating lung cancer ain’t cheap. Same goes for a lot of other vices like alcohol abuse and eating unhealthy food to attain obesity. At some level everybody ends up paying for other people’s bad personal bad habits.

    • Angus B. Urger
      April 12, 2016 at 2:06 pm

      Insurance is an agreement made between consenting parties. They know that the smoker will live less and cost more and adjust accordingly.

      Likewise, you’re paying for a service, not a disbursement equal to your percentage of money paid in relative to the pot, you receive that service, insurance, regardless of whether or not a smoker costs more.

      Second hand smoke is the only argument you can make with regards to harm to other people, and given its curbing from public places, it isn’t the threat it once was. I’m sorry but your argument doesn’t hold water.

  • Tinfoil
    April 12, 2016 at 1:13 pm

    Vape manufacturers trying to eliminate competition

  • Wabbitt
    wabbitt
    April 12, 2016 at 1:12 pm

    I’m not a smoker. Never started. Several relatives died of lung cancer. But if people want to smoke they’ll find a way to do it. No amount of scientific evidence and legislation are going to stop people from sucking smoke, tar, and nicotine into their lungs if they’re so inclined.

    I mean, think about it – coke, meth, and heroin are illegal. But druggies still find a way to get them.

    It’s all part of the Walgreens to prison pipeline!

  • Practical
    April 12, 2016 at 12:41 pm

    CIgarettes are beginning to be identified with low income and the ignorant, groups that you can show disdain for. Same way that weed once once identified with anti-establishment hippies.

    Liquor? Doesn’t matter if you’re scrubbing a toilet or running a hedge fund, everyone drinks. You’ll never see it touched again.

    • Dom
      April 12, 2016 at 12:53 pm

      I agree, anti-smoking groups are trying create the negative connotation that smoking cigarettes = poor/ignorant. Take a drive down Wall St. and you will see crowds of hedge fund managers and stock brokers outside smoking in front of every building.

      • Yux
        April 12, 2016 at 1:41 pm

        Wall Street guys ARE poor.

        In character.

        • Dom
          April 12, 2016 at 2:49 pm

          There are literally over 10k people that work on that 1/2 mile block. You have met all of them and determined the character of each person?

          What is your opinion of law enforcement officers…. they have some bad apples, does that make the entire profession = poor character?

          • Finnish Goalie
            April 12, 2016 at 8:57 pm

            Wall Street workers and Teachers, apparently the two most loathed groups amongst the employed.

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