New Jersey to Raise Smoking Age
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New Jersey's legislature has passed a general smoking ban in public places that the (acting) governor is expected to sign into law. Nothing new there. It's the Politics of the Warm Fuzzy Feeling.
Atlantic City's casinos are exempt from the ban. Nothing surprising there. It's the Politics of Pull.
New Jersey is also likely to raise the smoking age to 19 (sorta kinda -- 18-year olds apparently would be able to smoke cigarettes, they just wouldn't be able to buy cigarettes). Nothing logical there. But who cares? It's hack politicians expressing "the will of the people" (if not the will of 18-year olds).
I blogged about a similar proposal in New York back in May. My point then, and now, is that the new tolerance for unbridled majoritarianism will increasingly result in anti-liberty travesties such as this. "Eighteen-year olds" are a permanent minority with a permanent lack of political power. It is just such a group that needs and deserves the protection that flows from acknowledging rights that are immune from majority vote. Like the right to be an adult and purchase a legal product, no matter how many people think you shouldn't.
Gays encounter this new-found fetish for elevating the will of the majority over the rights of the individual all the time. Now it's 18-year olds. Tomorrow it will be some other group -- perhaps some permanent minority that includes you.
If so, then what can one say except: good luck with that.
Hat tip to Hammer of Truth.
Atlantic City's casinos are exempt from the ban. Nothing surprising there. It's the Politics of Pull.
New Jersey is also likely to raise the smoking age to 19 (sorta kinda -- 18-year olds apparently would be able to smoke cigarettes, they just wouldn't be able to buy cigarettes). Nothing logical there. But who cares? It's hack politicians expressing "the will of the people" (if not the will of 18-year olds).
I blogged about a similar proposal in New York back in May. My point then, and now, is that the new tolerance for unbridled majoritarianism will increasingly result in anti-liberty travesties such as this. "Eighteen-year olds" are a permanent minority with a permanent lack of political power. It is just such a group that needs and deserves the protection that flows from acknowledging rights that are immune from majority vote. Like the right to be an adult and purchase a legal product, no matter how many people think you shouldn't.
Gays encounter this new-found fetish for elevating the will of the majority over the rights of the individual all the time. Now it's 18-year olds. Tomorrow it will be some other group -- perhaps some permanent minority that includes you.
If so, then what can one say except: good luck with that.
Hat tip to Hammer of Truth.
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Posted by Kip on
10 January 2006
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