Someone, Somewhere Might Be Happy

“H.L. Mencken famously defined puritanism as ‘the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.” He might have been describing contemporary anti-smoking activists.'”  This is the opening line of a Nick Guillespie article in Reason entitled The Clueless Crusade to Ban E-Cigarettes.

Guillespie does a great job of exposing the illogical thinking spewing forth from organizations that are struggling to remain relevant.  Electronic cigarettes should be embraced as the single best alternative to smoking that has ever come along.  Instead, the organizations that seek to curb tobacco use continue to try to eliminate the technology, apparently just because it looks like smoke.

As he puts it “And now, the prohibitionists are taking on e-cigarettes because… because… because… smoking tobacco is bad for you. And they don’t think you should decide how to live your life.”  At best the anti-smoking rejection of ecigs is misguided, at worst it hypocritical.  In the end, it’s just another attempt at keeping us from being happy.

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