Katha Pollitt and Andrew Sullivan

Andrew,

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More in a minute, but I have to question your joy at more kids smoking. You had me up till then, but seriously, Andrew, smoking is really bad for you, and I would not be happy if my daughter, now 10, took up the habit in a few years. Somewhere between the dreary lectures of the health police and the mad cackle of "libertarians" celebrating smoking as a mark of rugged individualism, there ought to be room for a calm evaluation of smoking as one public health problem among many, and for a commonsensical approach to prevention. It's true that people bring the harm of smoking on themselves, except for the secondhand-smoking victims, but that's true about a wide range of social and medical problems. What is it Pascal (?) said about all the trouble in life coming from man's inability to stay in his room?
It's interesting, though, isn't it, how every social policy now has to be justified as being "for children" or "for families" (working families, that is, as the cant phrase goes on both right and left). It's as if everyone's just given up on grown-ups. And single people? Forget it. Nobody cares! So at least until they legalize gay marriage, you can smoke all you want.

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