122. IPSD 2019: “It’s A Hobby, Not A Habit”
Almost as soon as I took up the hobby of pipe smoking, I had friends, family and well-meaning acquaintances arching their eyebrows, asking me if I didn’t know pipe smoking was dangerous to my health and even once or twice urging me to give it up on religious grounds. And every year since I’ve had conversations with my students, who seem to think it’s a secret way to get high, and my doctor, who is morally censorious without being able to point medically to a single epidemiological study to support his view. Far more insidious and worrying, of course, is the bizarre juggernaut of bipartisan politics, not only in the US but worldwide to "regulate" if not eradicate a noble and beneficent practice that probably predates Mesa Verde's Pipe Shrine House (c. 900AD). It would be funny if it weren't so serious, since they all bear an uncanny resemblance to the Widow Douglas in Mark Twain's Huck Finn. As Huck himself repines in the opening chapter of that Great American Novel: Pretty soon I wanted to smoke, and asked the widow to let me. But she wouldn't. She said it was a mean practice and wasn't clean, and I must try to not do it any more. That is just the way with some people. They get down on a thing when they don't know nothing about it. Here she was a bothering about Moses, which was no kin to her, and no use to anybody, being gone, you see, yet finding a power of fault with me for doing a thing that had some good in it. Huck's common sense is a scarce commodity these days, and when Rick Newcombe directed me to Sheldon Richman's brilliant analysis of the current state of affairs here in the US (which is milder than what is happening in many other countries), I felt at last I had a champion who could voice my own concern. I am delighted to share his wisdom with you today of all days, and hope it will resonate with you as well. It bears reading and re-reading and I urge you to pass it along to others - perhaps even "those "who don't know nothing about it" - in hopes of achieving a broader understanding of and sympathy for pipe smokers everywhere. As Sheldon says, "It's a hobby, not a habit." Happy International Pipe Smoking Day! The FDA’s Assault on Tobacco Consumers by Sheldon Richman Part 1 Germany: Dragon's Egg, by Dirk Heinemann We’ve all heard horror stories about the run-amok regulatory state. Enabled by open-ended statutes passed by Congress and signed by presidents, regulatory agencies have acquired virtual carte blanche to write rules governing peaceful behavior. Even when a seemingly narrow purpose has been set out, regulatory rule-making has engaged in mission-creep with alarming regularity. Here’s an example that gets little attention because it directly impinges on the freedom of only a small number of Americans. For the last 10 years the U.S. Food…