New York Is At It Again

New York, it appears, looks determined to be nominated the shittiest city in America to live.  The Bloombergian do gooders want to focus their nanny state mentality to cigarettes. You would think that with cigarette consumption has more than halved since 1965, when cigarette consumption per capita was at it's peak, and with the CDC reporting that cigarette consumption declined by 40% from 2000 that individuals would be content with what has been done. After all the data strongly suggests, I cannot say prove without running some sort of regressive analysis, that all the media and public awareness campaigns have worked.  Smoking is down and it continues to drop.  At this point the idea, and rhetoric, that tobacco companies are duping people into smoking or that they have co opted congress is hard to believe.

My generation has been inundated with the dangers of smoking since birth via D.A.R.E and rather ghastly commercials and videos. At this point if people under the age of 21 choose to smoke then they do so knowing fully well what they risk. If some 17 year old kid gets hooked on cigarettes then I don't see how we can say society has not done enough. But not according to Mayor Bloomberg! Oh no, he has said that he wants New York to raise the minimum age to buy tobacco to 21.  It looks like this asshole politician doesn't think we are doing enough and wants to protect the children, who are old enough to vote, be tried as adults, have sex and be drafted for war, from the mean retailers forcing those nasty cigarettes down their throat. 

I love this quote by the Mayor

"These laws would protect New Yorkers, especially young and impressionable New Yorkers," Bloomberg said at a Queens hospital.
 

 I can't disagree with using the adjective impressionable for young individuals, after all they voted for progressive policies based on their feelings, but how exactly is a law going to protect them?  We have laws against domestic abuse and hate crimes yet this still hasn't stopped man from wailing on his wife, or from a man suffering from deserved mental torment from a militant feminist she-beast, and we also have laws against racially motivated crimes, that too hasn't been prevented. But most importantly, given that alcohol is officially unavailable to most frat boys in America how do you explain the preponderance of drunken idiots at universities at various colleges around the country? Oh that's right, the laws don't do anything!  They are there to make you feel good, or in the case of the unscrupulous.

Make no mistake even when Mayor Bloomberg was a 'Republican' he was never a Republican.  He was only as Republican as he needed to be to serve his image as a tough on crime competent administrator with extensive business experience.  Now that he doesn't need those credentials, or has seen the way the political wind is blowing, he can fully engage in his nanny state progressive nanny statism.

Given many 'liberal' Americans preoccupation with gay rights, and just to be clear I have no dog in this fight and could care less if a dude and a dude marry, you'd think that they would realize that they are slowly sowing the seeds of their own ruination. Fundamentally, in regards to individual liberty and statism, there isn't a difference between using government force from preventing a gay person from creating a marriage contract with another gay person and using government force to prevent people from smoking. In both instances it accomplishes nothing. Gays will still live together and have children via adoption or some other method, once again not that I care, and 18 year old kids will still find ways to smoke a 'cig'.


I'm not a smoker, I light up a cigar at weddings and New Years, and I don't really care for the habit, however, if given the chance to meet the man, I would light up in front of him and blow the fattiest smoke puff I could.  This guy seriously needs to be brought down a peg or two.

*UPDATE*

Looks like Mayor Bloomberg isn't the only crusader on this cause in New York. Reason says Christine Quinn wants to do the same.

Can We Just Admit

The the Mayor of New York is just a extremely wealthy curmudgeon that has no real interest in people outside of telling them how to live. He's going after head phones now; you brought this on yourself New York.