I don’t smoke, and I didn’t know there was such a thing as fire-safe cigarettes, but apparently there are states legislating their sale, and Andrew Sullivan today got a life-affirming rant from one of his readers about them.
Money quote:
We Missourians who choose to smoke got our latest – and unspeakably vile – taste of this neo-totalitarianism which the Puritan killjoys Trojan-horsed into law: the so-called “Fire-Safe Cigarettes” that taste worse than shit. Actually they don’t taste like shit, they taste like dirty pennies and burned plastic. This vile taste stays, it clings even after you brush your teeth, even after you’ve slept overnight and again brushed your teeth, and it sickens you to your stomach. There was just one diabolical purpose behind the Trojan horse “FSC” cigarette, and that was to enable the busy-bodies to reach beyond their already successful efforts to ban smoking in public places (and in some jurisdictions, even in citizens’ own homes) to stick their foul killjoy hands, their very distaste for liberties they don’t approve of, into the very mouths of people who choose to smoke. I no longer enjoy living in and I no longer want to live in these United States.
Read the rest of this reader’s rant here.
Prometheus Unbound 