TheAgitator.com
Radley vs. the Healthists: Diane Rehm Recap
Tuesday, January 10th, 2006If you missed it and are still interested, you can listen to an archive of my debate on the Diane Rehm Show here.
Got some email from listenders who asked if the people I was debating actually kept a straight face in the studio as they made some of the claims they did. The answer, unfortunately, is yes. In fact, the fellow from the American Lung Association and the woman from the American Cancer Society regularly looked over at one another and rolled their eyes as I was speaking.
I thought I scored some points when I got both to admit that it should be illegal for even one bar to be open in the city in which people could come have a beer and smoke a cigarette, even if everyone who patronizes, works in, and passes by the bar knows there will be smoking inside. That, to the healthists, is too much. Which proves that their campaign is nothing about protecting workers, customers, or anyone else. It’s about control. They want to control our lives.
But the highlight of the debate for me had to be when I asked Alfred Munzer, former president of the American Lung Association if he supported the idea of only placing foster children in nonsmoking homes, regardless of how fit a family with members who smoke might otherwise be. Or, put more buntly, are foster kids better off in orphanges than in loving homes where someone happens to smoke?
Dr. Munzer’s response?
“A loving home is a nonsmoking home.”
Unreal. Think about how that might be taken to its logical conclusion. Is it so difficult to envision the day when the state starts taking children away from parents who smoke? Many states already grant preference to nonsmoking parents in custody cases. The idea that a kid is better off in an orphanage than in a smoking home with people who will take care of him is just about the most absurd thing to come out of a healthist’s mouth I’ve heard to date.
