Yankee Brew News Archive

Pub Corner: Don't Clap, We Are Next

Originally Published: 07/95

By: Donald S. Gosselin

I have, what some would consider, the grave misfortune of a downtown office location in our region's largest city. My building is centrally located, and abuts several major insurance companies, large retailers and government agencies.

I first noticed them not long after moving into this location. They would congregate in front of several of the office buildings, including my own. They would band together and jointly participate in the foul habit that defines them. Were they drug addicts sharing some forbidden narcotic? No. Nor were they gamblers engaged in a furtive game of three card monte. They weren't even winos, pimps, panhandlers or beggars.

They were smokers.

There seems to be little, if any empathy for this shunned group, even among former smokers. One friend, a former smoker, summed it all up, saying, "To hell with them. It's a filthy habit anyway."

Think about that for a moment. Each of us has witnessed the vilification of a major segment of our society and did little, if anything, to stop it. We authorized our government to expend tax dollars towards anti-smoking education. As a result, smokers are lectured at home by their kids, who are taught in school about the evils of tobacco. Some even allowed their local governments to ban smoking in all public places, including taverns and pubs, rather than allow the free marketplace to decide.

In the Massachusetts towns of Northampton and Brookline for instance, those who light up in a pub risk arrest by the local constable. Other New England cities and towns are considering enacting similar outright bans on the foul weed, even to the point of prohibiting smoking on a public sidewalk. So much for the poor chumps who must leave their office and gather outside to fuel their habit.

On another front, "sin taxes" have ben raised to nearly confiscatory levels. Does anyone remember what happened when our Canadian cousins tried this approach a few years ago? It didn't take long to convert hard scrabble American Indians into modern day buccaneers -- armed to the teeth, spending their nights zipping back and forth across the St. Lawrence Seaway, their speedboats brimming with good-old tax free smokes. So much for prohibition by excessive taxation.

This cumulative legal, educational and social pressure has convinced most of us that smokers are the lepers of the nineties. Don't believe me? Try firing one up after dinner at a friend's house. You'll see what I mean.

How did this happen so quickly and easily? It started twenty years ago with with an outright government ban on televised and radio cigarette ads. Next came government-mandated warnings about the hazards of smoking that appear on each carton, box and print advertisement. When that didn't work, along came higher federal and state taxes. Amazingly enough, some of that tax usury was actually used by the government to fund anti-smoking programs.

Shill groups, including the Committee for Science in the Public Interest, came on board with their analyses of this public health "menace". Published reports about second-hand smoke were next, released by the government and like-thinking sycophants. Finally, the government unleashed its "bad habit" cops, the Bureau of Uniformed Non-Combatants, more commonly known as the Surgeon General's Office, to help vilify tobacco and its users.

Don't get the wrong idea, I do not leap to the defense of a practice which, in all likelihood, will lead to your death. The tobacco "habit" is not the issue. The real issue is our freedom to choose and to be held personally responsible for those choices. In other words, the freedom to choose and choose unwisely. It goes something like this -- if you want to smoke, go ahead and smoke. If you want to eat a heart-attack diet, laden with saturated fat, go for it. Similarly, if you want to throw yourself into Quechee Gorge, and plan on taking no one else with you, it should be your right, your choice, and your decision. It is you who bears the ultimate responsibility for making this decision and it is you who will pay the ultimate price.

Have we heard the last from the social engineers and government moralists? I think not. As long as there are groups who believe that they must protect people from themselves, and a government that insists on legislating personal responsibility, we will be plagued by similar crusades. What will the next issue be? What other foul habits will the government, and groups like the CSPI fix their sights upon? Take a guess.

While the anti-smoking campaign took two decades to produce results, this latest attempt at social engineering has made significant gains in under five years. A few years ago they forced all brewers to provide written warnings on each and every beer sold in the US. The warnings, designed for people with room temperature IQs, tell us not to operate heavy machinery after drinking beer. Pregnant women are warned, based on dubious evidence, that they should entirely avoid drinking beer. Sound ridiculous? Some of our elected representatives wanted to go even farther. The unholy alliance of Congressman Joe Kennedy, an admitted dope smoker, and Senator Strom Thurmond proposed the facetiously-named SAFE Act a few years ago. That law would have required every brewer to include warnings on all print and broadcast advertisements. One example, and this is no joke, went like this; "Don't mix alcohol and illegal drugs." I'm picturing a crack head dumping his 40 ounce malt liquor down the sewer after having read that warning--if he can read. Perhaps they overlooked a more appropriate warning: "Hypocrisy may be dangerous to a political career."

While brewers and vintners are required to speak of the alleged dangers of their products, our government forbids them from telling consumers about scientifically proven health benefits associated with their moderate use. Robert Mondavi wanted to tell people about proven health benefits associated with moderate consumption of his exceptional wines. Our government told him to forget it. Bert Grant tried to list nutritional information on Grant's Ales, including caloric, carbohydrate and vitamin content -- much like you would find on a box of Twinkies. The Bureau of Alcohol ,Tobacco and Firearms buried the Yakima brewer in yards of red tape and a mountain of legal costs.

Are you still not convinced? Consider the chilling fact that our public school kids are taught that cocaine, heroin, LSD and alcohol are all hard and harmful drugs.

Government moralists and social engineers have a strong ally in this fight. Our electronic and print media rarely present a balanced, factual discussion on the dangers and the benefits of alcohol use. Instead, they pound us with endless statistics on "alcohol-related accidents". These statistics fail to mention that, if you are a sober cab driver and your passenger has had a few beers, any accident that you are involved in is deemed "alcohol-related". Pity if the poor passenger dies, he'll be mentioned on the 6:00 news as another "alcohol-related fatality". It's a numbers game. But because few have the gumption to dispute the voodoo science and phony figures that support their claims, they win by default. You know what happens when a lie is repeated, over and over again--it becomes known as the truth. What happens when enough people are convinced that these extreme views are true?

Picture yourself at a dinner party at a friend's house. To cap off a delicious meal, you uncork an aged bottle of Chimay Gold Label. As you pour the ale into your glass, you look up and see a look of antipathy on your friend's face. The table conversation is suddenly interrupted. Everyone is looking at you. You stop pouring. "Would you mind drinking that stuff outside," you friend asks. "We frown on drinking here."

The next time you see some poor chump standing in the rain outside his office, puffing away, have a little sympathy. Unless responsible, moderate adults band together and fight these latest attempts at social engineering, moderate imbibers will be the social lepers of the 21st century.