E-cigarettes could be confusing the children in NYC. The FDA has recently been on the manufacturer’s case.
The City Council takes the smoking ban (get Big Tobacco!) a step further:
‘But the real problem with e-cigarettes, according to Farley and other supporters of the ban, is that they look too much like the real thing. “E-cigarettes threaten, in my opinion, to undermine enforcement of the Smoke-Free Air Act,” City Council Speaker Christine Quinn said last week. “Because many of the e-cigarettes are designed to look like cigarettes and be used just like them, they can lead to confusion or confrontation.”
If you see something, say something. Is that a candy cigarette? An asthma-inhaler?
The City Council has added a new law in order to make compliance with previous laws easier. Come on, New Yorkers.
***Please keep in mind this has nothing to do with the latest Left-Of-Center activism either, like GMOs, fracking, the Keystone Pipeline, higher minimum-wage protests etc. There are absolutely no politics involved here. This is just for ‘the Public Health,’ even if e-cigarettes give many people a chance to lead healthier lives. The People’s Elected Officials are representing the General Will. I have been assured they are in possession of the latest (S)cience.
NYC’s immediate future probably involves a lot more of this: Laws on top of laws, higher-taxes trickling-down, burdensome regulations for businesses, and slowed-down processes where convenient for De Blasio’s coalitions. Every citizen shall have a voice, after all.
A video on how e-cigarettes work:
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And now for something related:
So, is Left-liberalism on the rise? Perhaps. There are many streams in which folks can drift along into a kind of communitarianism and collectivism amenable to such idealism regarding politics. Many Americans may have been much more sympathetic to being left alone a generation or two ago.
The below quotation comes from a debate about art and political philosophy. It focuses on a question: Should there be public arts funding, and if so, how much of your money, if any, should go towards it?
David Byrne, former frontman of the Talking Heads and art-house/pop-musician/environmentalist is discussed (there was a Byrne interview featured in the NY Times):
‘I refrain from calling Byrne a socialist, but what goes unsaid here is that our objections are to a prior assumption by believers in state power, namely that because some undertaking is worth doing, that the state ought to be doing it. If Byrne is addressing society in the above quote (and I think he is to some degree, although largely by not making Bastiat’s distinction), he is doing so as if it were an aggregate, even an abstraction. This may be the essence of the statist mind: that an abstracted aggregate of other people ought to be devoting their energies to the effort I deem noble. It’s from there that the demands flow. The collectivist is not asking you to give up expenditures on your hobby to support his (even if his has been fashioned into a career), he’s asking the abstract aggregate to change its trajectory or support the arts or something nebulous and lofty like that. Cargo Culture springs into being when such demands are met.’
The days of wearing a smoking jacket and holding a cigar without being seen as provocative, anachronistic, or signaling irony are probably gone for the time being:
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Taxing soda in Seattle schools has unintended consequences. It’s not just taxation, it’s banning happy meals altogether.
Related On This Site: Sunstein’s got to create some space between the Bloomberg backlash and the further Left: Daddy’s Gonna Make You Do It…Behavioral economics-Repost-Cass Sunstein At The New Republic: ‘Why Paternalism Is Your Friend’
Anthony Randazzo At Reason’s Hit And Run: ‘The Case Against Libertarian Paternalism’
Sheldon Richman At Reason: ‘Classical Liberalism Vs. Modern Liberalism’…Repost-From The Spiked Review Of Books: ‘Delving Into The Mind Of The Technocrat’
What Will De Blasio’s New York Look Like?-Some Links
Richard Epstein At Defining Ideas: ‘City Planners Run Amok’…Virginia Postrel At Bloomberg: ‘How The Elites Built America’s Economic Wall’...The Irish were a mess: William Stern At The City Journal: ‘How Dagger John Saved New York’s Irish’
Politicians and politics likely won’t deliver you from human nature, nor fulfill your dreams in the way you want: anarchy probably won’t either: Two Sunday Quotations By Albert Jay Nock in ‘Anarchist’s Progress’
Josh Barro At Business Insider: ‘Dear New Yorkers: Here’s Why Your Rent Is So Ridiculously High’