this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2023
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Because people have been more and more conditioned to obey year after year. To be absolute pushovers who never fight against the grain, never question groupthink, etc. Grandfathering the criminalization (using violent enforcement) of something like smoking a cigarette is a shining example of what's to come.
Crystal Meth is illegal in all 50 states
Not defending cigarette companies, but it really actually does suck that meth is illegal in all 50 states. The United States has the world's largest prison population, it's the most authoritarian country on the planet, and that is heavily facilitated by throwing people into prison for using drugs.
'Authoritarianism' is a bullshit vague idealist concept that can't be linearized into 'more than', 'less than', 'most' or 'least', and make any sense.
The USA throw people in prison for decades and enslave them for being a victim of the drug trade. They have one of the largest proportions of imprisoned population in the world.
They also allow socialists to own guns and propagandize, to a larger degree than most countries.
Liberalism is complex, contradictory and idealist, so terms like 'authoritarianism' are basically meaningless to apply to the real world.
Are you by chance familiar with countries that kill LGBTQ people, beat women who don't cover their hair, and kill drug addicts?
Are you familiar with the sheer scale of destruction and death the United States has wrought on the rest of the world in its imperialist adventures? Nothing anywhere else in the modern day even comes close.
Theyre talking about the US, of course they are. Well, the US just beats women without hair coverings coming into it, but the point stands.
What are you even talking about? I know of no such instance, at least at the systemic level.
Well, I'm sorry you're ignorant about stochastic terrorism against lgbt people in the US, the epidemic of domestic violence facing women in the US, and the war on drugs.
I am gay and have friends who are trans. Yes, I am well aware of stochastic terrorism against LGBTQ people, as well as how right wing politicians are exploiting nutcases to get votes at the expensive of our safety. Domestic violence I find perplexing. It happens, but it's illegal and there are many institutions trying to tackle it. The US is far from the worst here, especially considering many countries still don't recognize domestic violence as a real thing.
The war on drugs is bad, but the US has a set of policies that are left over from the 1990's when things were really bad and no one really knew what to do. Even Black leaders went along with them, since their neighborhoods were the ones that were actually affected by the crime wave. Fortunately, we are seeing the slow unwinding of these polities. Now, compare the US's war on drugs to Singapore (death penalty for drug trafficking) or Dirty Deuterty's free-for-all on anyone who was even alleged to be a drug addict. Decisions by SCOTUS have limited the death penalty to murder only, and even then it is being slowly abolished.
Okay, cool, youre defending the violence of the current regime. Gotcha.
Also the US is literally why singapore is like that, crack open a history book.
Nope. I'm saying that the original claim - that the US is the most authoritarian government in the world - is incredibly ridiculous.
I don't have an in depth history of every law of every country. That said, I did some searching and I found no real connections besides the underlying law being passed at the same time Nixon started the War on Drugs. But even if the US's War on Drugs inspired Singapore's laws, to blame that on the US denies agency to the government and people of Singapore.
Highest prison population by capita and total, segregated, with 1000s of police killings a year.
Props up most of the worlds dictatorships
I said crack open a history book, not aimlessly speculate
Dooog wwhiisstllleeeessss
Let me guess, you're from the US and you've never left.
You ironically found yourself pointing out something valid. Banning companies from putting addictive substances into everyday products has always been a good idea (Meth in Cheerios, no thx). Banning an individual from choosing, by their own free will, to make a bad decision that doesn't do any great harm to anyone else... is oppression my guy.
There's a big difference between banning addictive industries and oppression. There's a big difference between 'a government not letting people do something' and 'oppression'. There might be a case that this way of eliminating tobacco usage, by just making an addictive substance illegal, can be cruel if there isn't adequate social support alongside it, but banning smoking by itself isn't cruel, malicious or arbitrary.
I think there are some reasonable arguments for not criminalizing tobacco, and that this is a silly ineffective way to approach a chemically-and-socially addictive issue, but it is harmful to health for the user and others, society and therefore economics. And this can't be rationalized away by 'it's someone's own free will' when it's chemically-addictive, socially-ingrained and still being marketed to vulnerable teens. And, keep in mind, the medical costs of this are socialised, so it's not like the person smoking pays for all the consequences. It's a systematic, non-trivial problem that significantly affects people who do not choose to partake.
With all that said, fuck the 'war on drugs' style of criminalization. It just creates an illegal market and fills prisons, and in some countries with a similar system to the US, creates a legalized form of mass slave labour.
cigs are bad, phase 'em out
That's not how that law works it would be a law on shops