Make smoking illegal

Mayor Bloomberg is a champion of the nanny state's duty to care for its people. The government has your best interest at heart and knows better. It started with those pesky crimes like sitting on milk crates. Then car idling. Transfats. Salt. Smoking has always been on the radar screen as the most egregiously unhealthy activity and once he got rid of smoking section for total smoking bans, one would think he would stop.

But no. He need to levy stiff taxes against smokers with $2 and now almost $4 taxes per pack (wasn't the increased tax revenue to go to education or children's healthcare or something?) Estimates run in the $20's of millions in lost tax revenue due to a thriving black market. But that wasn't enough for Mayor Mike.

New York City Council with Mike's enthusiastic support has determined you can't smoke in certain outdoors sections like... the outdoors. And this is good... because smoking is bad. So bad we need to tax and deter and punish and inconvenience smokers into submission. (you reading this Obama?) Congrats, New York. Your 8 million children are safe. Will you wipe their chins and feed them their bottle next?

I suggest being truly radical. If we are going to care for the health of the citizenry... if we really want to protect them... we will just make smoking illegal. Drugs are illegal. Why not smoking?

Just ask the smoking Nazis about the "dangers of second hand smoke". Scientific evidence shows that anyone breathing within 1000 feet of a smoker will die instantly. Each year millions of people die from second hand smoke... just ask the Nazis.

So why not just make it illegal- completely and utterly illegal? Is it because thousands of people are employed in the tobacco industry? Is it because we export billions in cigarette sales around the world and need the money? Is it because New York needs the tax revenue? What could be more noble than just eliminating the entire industry once and for all?

We stopped slavery. We prohibit prostitution. Mayor Mike- if smoking is so dangerous and deadly- just make it completely illegal. It's the right thing to do for your people. It will be a moral victory and make New York a leader in world health. It will be your victory- Mayor Mike- the healthiest mayor in America. No, in the world. What a victory!

And we'll celebrate that victory with fine Cuban cigars. We can still smoke cigars, right?