Friday 4:20
Mrs. Lovejoy and her ilk are at it again. Sales of individual cigars have been banned in Maryland. If you want a cigar, you have to buy 5 at a time. The rationale for this pointless action is to prevent youth from becoming addicted to tobacco and becoming lifelong users of cigars. Also, they are worried about the recent trend of hollowing out the cigar and filling it with marijuana. In other words, the kids wisely chose to stay away from tobacco, a highly dangerous and addictive drug and went for the safer alternative.
Even if you believe that eradicating use of marijuana and tobacco is a good idea, I just can’t imagine why anybody thinks that banning the individual sale of cigars is going to make any difference. The kids will just find some other way to entertain themselves. This may even be a good opportunity for some enterprising youths to make some moeny. I’m sure that some kids will buy a five pack and sell them individually to their friends. Trends come and go and adults over-react, often in counterproductive ways. Besides, there are much better ways to get people to voluntarily give up their bad habits.
November 21st, 2008 at 7:35 pm
Price of a single cigar roll. $0.80
Price of 5 cigar rolls. $4.00
Price of an ounce of weed. $350…give or take.
So before the law came into effect. Kids were spending around $350.80 or so on this. Now after the law came into effect, people…err sorry…KIDS (won’t SOME one think of the children!) are spending $354.00…give or take.
Doesn’t THAT make all kinds of sense.
November 23rd, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I can’t tell you how disappointed I am to find out that Voltaire did not say “I may disagree with what you say, but I defend to the death your right to say it.” – but I’m not going to argue with the beloved Wikipedia, but I will introduce a quote I think we should be saying:
I may not agree with your choice of drugs, but I defend your right to use them.
That is, put the responsibility of drug use on the person involved. The government can no more dress us or feed us or choose our friends and loved ones. We’ve tried the experiment where it attempts to control our choice of drugs and that has failed: yes, the government can influence, but it cannot control – nor do we need it to.
I would bet you that if there were no minimum age for alcohol, there would be fewer alcoholics. No minimum age for tobacco, and there would be fewer smokers. No law against pot and there would be fewer users of pot.
We’re just contrary folk when you step on our rights.