Tom Keane

Butt out, anti-cigarette zealots

I THINK we’ve finally jumped the shark on cigarettes. Anti-tobacco rhetoric is now sounding increasingly like a remake of “Reefer Madness,’’ the notorious 1938 anti-pot film whose absurdist depictions of the evils of marijuana made it a cult film amongst 1970s-era youth. Consider what has happened just over the last month. The FDA proposed new scare-tactic ads about the evils of nicotine. The Massachusetts Hospital Association announced it won’t hire smokers (even those who only smoke at home). A new Surgeon General’s report claimed “one puff’’ will kill. And earlier this week a Massachusetts jury awarded a dead smoker $152 million. It all makes for an extraordinary combination of over-the-top hyperbole combined with an unwillingness to let adults make — and be responsible — for their own decisions.

Worried that people still smoke, the FDA has unveiled new and more graphic cigarette pack warnings and anti-tobacco advertisements. The ads are intended to be nauseating: A man holding a cigarette has smoke floating out through a tracheotomy hole in his neck. A dead corpse with sutures down his chest is laid out on a table. A smoker exposes teeth so brown and rotten he looks as if he might have been raised in England. The ads are little different from the pro-life movement’s use of stomach-turning images of abortion and share the same problem — something that’s disgusting isn’t necessarily bad (open heart surgery, for instance, is also pretty gross to watch).

Meanwhile, unsatisfied with efforts to persuade you to stop, the MHA wants to make you stop — and it plans to do so beginning next month by holding hostage the livelihood of its employees. Of course, the organization is hardly the first company to have tried to ban all workers from smoking. Michigan-based Weyco started the movement in 2005 and has been followed by a handful of companies such as Scotts Fertilizer, Alaska Airlines, and Union Pacific Railroad.

The move has a mercenary element to it — non-smokers make for lower health care premiums — but folks such as MHA’s executive director Lynn Nicholas prefer to portray themselves as benevolent parents whose adult workers are apparently incapable of thinking for themselves. “MHA is doing its small part by focusing on new hires — our future family of workers — to let them know that engaging in the number one cause of preventable death just isn’t acceptable,’’ she wrote on her company blog. Logically, of course, Nicholas’s next move will be to ban employees from drinking — alcohol also being a leading cause of preventable death.

And then there is the latest Surgeon General’s report, a 727-page tome issued last week to the accompaniment of an artfully worded press release that just “one puff’’ of a cigarette “could be the one that causes your heart attack.’’ A credulous media seized on the words “one puff’’ and trumpeted it widely: “one puff can kill you’’ was one headline. But that claim is a speculative stretch. The report itself notes that nicotine and other chemicals enter the body from the first puff (which seems logically obvious), but nowhere does it show where anyone ever died from just one puff — never mind their first puff — of a cigarette

This kind of hysteria is what led to this week’s stunning award on behalf of a woman who freely acknowledged she knew the dangers of smoking. There are many who will tell you they enjoy smoking. They know the risks but — like those who ride all-terrain vehicles — they do it anyway. Yet when it comes to tobacco, we no longer expect people to face the consequences of their choices. Couple that with scary ads, overweening bosses, and exaggerated harms; the absurdity dulls the mind and strains credibility. Worse, it may backfire.

I don’t smoke, by the way, and never have — a decision, I’d like to believe, based on a reasoned evaluation of the risks and rewards. But as the anti-smoking frenzy gets ever more intemperate, we face the danger of doing to tobacco what “Reefer Madness’’ did to pot — turning it into some sort of outlaw good that actually increases its attractiveness. Tobacco is our new forbidden fruit. Even I find myself wondering whether, perhaps, I should taste it.

Originally published in the Boston Globe.

 

Politicians, no more favors

POLITICIANS AT every level of government will typically tell you they got into their line of work because they love to help people. That can mean everything from getting someone a job, greasing the wheels of a recalcitrant bureaucracy, or helping constituents get services from a state or city agency. It all seems quite noble. And in the wake of the burgeoning scandal at the state’s Probation Department — a scandal that was fundamentally about jobs going to the politically well-connected — the state’s senior politicians aren’t backing down.

“Every member of the Legislature recommends people for positions. That’s part of what we do,’’ Senate President Therese Murray told a reporter last week. House Speaker Robert DeLeo has echoed the notion: “We recommend folks, whether it’s for school or housing, whatever it may be.’’

It is, from the perspective of almost all politicians, an obligation that comes with the territory, one of the “duties of our office,’’ in Murray’s words. Constituents seem to expect it, and their elected representatives are more than happy to deliver. Seen from that vantage point, the problems at the Probation Department are ones of degree, not kind. Thus, probation chief John J. O’Brien’s offenses were simply that he played the game a little too crassly. Pols have no issue with getting jobs for their friends and supporters. But, as the Wicked Witch explained to Dorothy as she contemplated the method of her death, “These things must be done delicately.’’ O’Brien’s approach was simply too ham-handed for a process that should be more a wink and a nod.

I understand the argument. I also understand that it’s the way politics has operated and to a large degree still operates. But it’s wrong and needs to change.

DeLeo claims that his job recommendations put no pressure on anyone: “I can tell you I do not put any undue influence on anyone relative to the hiring or not hiring of the person.’’ The argument is disingenuous in the extreme. DeLeo and every other pol who recommends folks for special consideration know that their requests are treated seriously. How can they not be? Government agencies depend upon legislators’ goodwill for, among other things, the funds to keep them going. One ignores a politician’s demands at one’s peril.

Moreover, one favor begets another. A job delivered for a legislator means that the legislator now owes something back. The eventual result is a complex web of relationships built on favors and obligations that end up driving decisions from hiring to budgets to legislation. The problem, of course, is that such horse-trading may have nothing to do with the merits of either an individual employee or public policy.

Worse, trading in favors ultimately undermines a fundamental notion of democracy: that we are all treated in the same way. When politicians reach out to help certain individuals — even when that help is warranted — they are in effect saying that, the rules notwithstanding, for a few they are going to make an exception. Thus, while the rules may say that applicants for civil service jobs are graded by a test, political involvement means that — for some — the test no longer matters. When the state police ticket an illegally parked car and a pol reaches out to fix that ticket, what is illegal for most is now OK for a few. Pulling strings to get a campaign worker into public housing — even if deserved — hurts those on a waiting list.

Granted, there may be problems with law and policy that require fixing. Maybe the civil service system is flawed. Maybe folks shouldn’t be getting tickets. Maybe the way we allocate housing should be reviewed. But the way for a legislator to change that is to change the rules — pass new laws or compel an agency to issue new regulations — not simply to make exceptions. Exceptions create the appearance — if not the reality — that the rule of law doesn’t apply to all. They breed cynicism about government, a belief that it’s all about who you know and not what is right. Legislators aren’t headhunters or social workers. If they want to get people jobs or deliver other favors, they should go into another line of work.

Originally published December 4, 2010, in The Boston Globe, op-ed page.