Excellent and very accurate analogy. Zealous tobacco controllers will counter by saying "you can live without nicotine but you cannot live without food". True, but the same dismissal from puritans would come about every single pleasure from every substance/habit except those crudely essential for survival: eating/drinking water, breathing and species reproduction. Reduction of all human experiences to the naked crude basics of survival and longevity requires a massive dictatorship. Normally our health puritans apply it selectively, only to nicotine. But this apparent restraint is not because they want to spare other substances, it is simply because they lack the political power to treat alcohol and caffeine as nicotine. In the end, health puritans are just a holly priesthood that operates when the political powers allows them (or tolerates it). The puritans know that they would rapidly loose the support of high ranking politicians who love to drink wine and whisky. They also know that political elites no longer smoke and have been convinced by puritans that vapes/pouches are just cigarettes Version 2.0.
Consumer habits that provide guilt-free pleasure cannot be allowed to stand - the zealots will either try to tax it or ban it. I should dust off my old campaign to ban coffee ;-)
Excellent and very accurate analogy. Zealous tobacco controllers will counter by saying "you can live without nicotine but you cannot live without food". True, but the same dismissal from puritans would come about every single pleasure from every substance/habit except those crudely essential for survival: eating/drinking water, breathing and species reproduction. Reduction of all human experiences to the naked crude basics of survival and longevity requires a massive dictatorship. Normally our health puritans apply it selectively, only to nicotine. But this apparent restraint is not because they want to spare other substances, it is simply because they lack the political power to treat alcohol and caffeine as nicotine. In the end, health puritans are just a holly priesthood that operates when the political powers allows them (or tolerates it). The puritans know that they would rapidly loose the support of high ranking politicians who love to drink wine and whisky. They also know that political elites no longer smoke and have been convinced by puritans that vapes/pouches are just cigarettes Version 2.0.
Consumer habits that provide guilt-free pleasure cannot be allowed to stand - the zealots will either try to tax it or ban it. I should dust off my old campaign to ban coffee ;-)
Sometimes I worry you're giving people ideas :)