Last night my father called me from Texas.
“I read your column.”
“Which one?” I asked.
“The one where you sounded like a liberal . . .” he deadpanned.
“Oh, yeah. The Wall one, huh.”
I guess if I can’t influence my own family, I pretty much suck at presenting an understandable argument, so I’ll give it another shot on a different topic.
First, for new readers to this column, I’m a libertarian. Taking it a bit further, I served as the Executive Director of the Libertarian National Committee (Libertarian Party), for four years and turned around their slide into bankruptcy (and complete obscurity).
But that was as a kid in my 20’s. Since then, I’ve become far more grounded in my beliefs and they’re fairly simple – every living person (including unborn children) has a God-given right to Liberty.
It’s not at all complex.
Liberty means being able to make your own decisions for yourself, your family and your community . . . even if they’re the wrong decisions.
Want to work hard, be smart and become a billionaire? Go for it.
Choose to be a meth head and destroy your health and personal growth? Hey, if that’s your thing, it’s your choice.
Whether business tycoon or crack head, the same two rules apply: don’t hurt people or steal their stuff.
It’s an easy code to live by . . . if we were allowed to live our lives like that.
But our all-knowing and all-powerful government won’t allow that.
Our labor and wealth are stolen by a bloated and greedy government that provides very little to the average taxpayer. This was proven by the month-long government shutdown, where the only government agency that impacted the population was the TSA – an agency that should not exist.
Then you have rule after rule established in the duty of crony-capitalism that impacts your ability to make your own decisions in life.
While I mentioned drug addicts above, what about those who want to improve their lives after making poor decisions?
Shouldn’t they have to freedom to improve?
Not according to our government – and one agency’s actions are proving that they would literally rather allow you to die.
Want a sinister example of this?
Let me introduce you to the Food and Drug Administration’s “War on Vaping”. Sure, you’re thinking, “Ugh, stupid vaping. I don’t vape and I don’t care.”
But read on my friend because this isn’t a tale about nerds walking around the mall blowing vape clouds. It’s about a war over hundreds of billions of dollars.
Why is the FDA is trying to kill this industry?
Vaping is, at least, twice as effective as a smoking cessation product than nicotine replacement products like patches and gum – a statistic just backed up by the New England Journal of Medicine this week.
More importantly, smokers are more likely to try vaping over other methods to quit.
That’s great, right?
Not if you’re in the industry of sickness . . . and I’m not talking the measly $35 billion tobacco industry.
I’m talking the goliath $172 billion global cancer industry.
By far, the leading cause of cancer is smoking (not nicotine), and those who profit off of the disease are losing billions of dollars to vaping.
Every person who vapes and succeeds at quitting the death sticks, costs the cancer lobby a shot at a $200,000 payday in treatment costs – and tax revenue.
It’s sick to believe that our government would support an increased cancer rate, but look at the numbers yourself and try to come up with a different motive to kill vaping aside from the tired, “but it’s for the children” line.
If you read the headlines that are driven by the media and government, you’d think that vaping is the new heroin and needs to be banned before our elementary school kids are strung out on Juul pods.
But that’s the winning tactic.
Government and big industries distort the facts, fabricated threats and use their political influence (and cash) to protect their own interests.
When all other lies work, they make it about “the children.”
And that’s where we stand now with the FDA and it’s move to ban flavors in vaping products. Banning flavors means driving the vaping industry into an underground hobby and limiting its consumer accessibility.
Limited accessibility means far fewer ex-smokers, and many more cancer patients.
Liberty, even the most simple form of quitting smoking, is obstructed by our own government. That’s damned pathetic.
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