http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2009/07/wendell-berrys-pipe-dreams.html
This is a blog I like to read & the author always struck me as someone who is open minded & believes in liberty. He seems to believe in intelligence & reason over fear & paranoia.
However, something in a recent post regarding Wendell Berry made me raise an eyebrow.
An excerpt:
I asked for more information regarding his opinions of tobacco & his response was thus:
Am I missing something?
Edited to add:
I am new to cigars, but even prior to claiming this as a hobby, I saw no reason whatsoever for the vilification of tobacco.
This is a blog I like to read & the author always struck me as someone who is open minded & believes in liberty. He seems to believe in intelligence & reason over fear & paranoia.
However, something in a recent post regarding Wendell Berry made me raise an eyebrow.
An excerpt:
Mr. Berry's farm grows corn (that evil weed) and other grains, as well as tobacco (cough, cough).
In fact, tobacco has been the touchstone of the Berry household -- the cash crop that made everything else work, not only on his farm, but in his larger farming community which he now so eloquently bemoans the decline of.
Why did Berry and his neighbors grow tobacco? Simple: You could make a lot of money by plowing just a few acres of poor soil.
Never mind that tobacco bled the land white.
Never mind that tobacco killed 400,000 to 500,000 Americans a year -- more Americans than alcohol, AIDS, car accidents, illegal drugs, murders, and suicides combined.
Where has Berry said he regrets his family's 50-year complicity in the poisoning of the American people and land with tobacco?
I asked for more information regarding his opinions of tobacco & his response was thus:
Pretty simple.
There is a proper human consumption of food.
There is no proper human consumption of tobacco.
To make an analogy: I am a supporter of the Second Amendment because there is a proper use for both long guns and hand guns.
I am opposed to an *unrestricted* Second Amendment, as there is no proper civilian use for carrying a bazooka through a civilian airport.
Nicotine follows the same legal and logic structure -- a principle Congress recently affirmed.
Nicotine is an insecticide, and it should be regulated as such.
Since we do not allow the licensing of insecticides in food or pills or ready-made one-shot home-hypodermic sets, we should not allow the delivery of insecticides in cigerettes.
Cigarettes, cigars, etc. are simple nicotine delivery systems, no different than a syringe is for heroin.
If you want to go out and buy nicotine insecticide and drink it, shoot it up, or huff it, you are free to do so, same as paint thinner, gasoline, glue, or a good all-purpose rodenticide. All of these products have legal uses, and they are not banned as a condequence. That said, the sale of these products IS banned under the FDA and is *regulated* as a poison or carcinogen under the EPA.
That is what is going to happen to tobacco, and it's about time.
As for farmers who grow tobacco, they are people who are making a CHOICE to profit from human addiction, misery and death. Their actions, in that sense, are no different than those of a drug dealer who sells crack, or a car manufacturer that green-lights the production of a car with faulty brakes. There is no moral ambiguity here.
Am I missing something?
Edited to add:
I am new to cigars, but even prior to claiming this as a hobby, I saw no reason whatsoever for the vilification of tobacco.