Subscribe to Workers Vanguard

View archives

	Workers Vanguard No. 1162	4 October 2019

Morality Cops Strike Again

Let Them Vape!

For the past month, the U.S. has been gripped by a health panic over so-called vaping-related illnesses. The government and media have seized on the deaths of over a dozen people and the hospitalization of hundreds who exhibited a variety of respiratory problems—still of unknown origin—to enact draconian measures against e-cigarettes and vaping products. On September 11, the Trump White House proposed a plan to ban flavored vapes nationwide. Shortly after, Democratic New York governor Andrew Cuomo ordered an emergency prohibition on flavored e-cigs and Massachusetts implemented a four-month total ban. With liberal Democrats leading the charge, authorities are trying to suck the public in through sheer fearmongering and anti-smoker bias, with no scientific evidence to back them up. Warning: this crusade is bad for your health.

Having banished cigarette smokers to huddled ghettos of shame and loathing, today the morality police turn their fire on e-cigarette users. Countless smokers who have quit tobacco by switching to far safer vaping now find themselves hounded by the same puritanical busybodies who recoil at the prospect of sin without punishment. Underscoring the cruelty of this campaign, flavored vapes have been specially targeted. For many ex-smokers, the (non-tobacco) flavors are crucial to sticking with their electronic nicotine hits. Limiting the choice to tobacco-flavor vapes or banning e-cigs altogether will no doubt push people away from an enjoyable, effective alternative and drive them back to a pack or two a day.

Moreover, outlawing vaping products won’t stop people from vaping. It will only endanger vapers by encouraging them to buy on the black market, which, according to health officials, is one of the possible culprits for the current spate of lung illnesses. To the extent that scientists have established any connection to vaping products, it is to counterfeit “dank vapes” or other bootleg products from street vendors that contain THC and are likely contaminated with toxins. The hysteria against vaping sure doesn’t help get to the bottom of what’s actually causing the illnesses. At the same time, pounding on the purported link between lung illnesses and THC, the fun component of marijuana, will only fuel prejudice against pot.

It is true that long-term effects of e-cigs cannot yet be known since they have only been around for a little more than a decade. But as reported in a 2016 study by Britain’s Royal College of Physicians, those effects are “unlikely to exceed 5% of those associated with smoked tobacco products, and may well be substantially lower than this figure.” This past February, Public Health England, a government body, reinforced that conclusion and strongly recommended e-cigs as a substitute for cigarettes.

There are over ten million adult e-cig users in the U.S. alone (and at least four times that number globally). Supposing there really have been more than 800 lung injuries related to vaping, it would still be far safer than riding in a car. Even when products like actual cigarettes are known to be dangerous, we think the capitalist government should keep its dirty hands off those who use them. People have the right to their own choices regarding their bodies, habits and lifestyles. We oppose all laws against so-called “crimes without victims”—drugs, gambling, prostitution, etc. Individuals ought to be able to read, eat, drink, smoke and enjoy whatever consensual sexual activities they want without the cops and courts butting in.

No moral panic is complete in this country if it doesn’t invoke the cry: “Think of the children!” Talk of a teenage vaping “epidemic” is merely a backhanded way to attack the rights of everyone. Take, for example, all the noise that vaping may be a “gateway” drug to smoking or other behavior deemed socially “deviant.” Or, as the government’s National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine put it in a 2018 report on the alleged public health consequences of e-cigs: “After successfully engaging in one risky act (i.e., vaping), courage to engage in other risky acts (i.e., smoking) may build.” In fact, figures show that as vaping has increased among youth, cigarette smoking has dropped sharply. The real point is that with a growing vaping subculture among teenagers (not to mention millennials), the powers that be worry that this activity falls outside the box of their puritanical social norms.

Anti-vapers often focus on the fact that nicotine, delivered by whatever mechanism (traditional cigarette, vape, chaw, etc.), is addictive. Yes, it is. But people have the right to put addictive substances in their bodies—including the most common addictive substance, caffeine. What drives the modern-day Carrie Nations crazy is not that vaping is dangerous but, on the contrary, that it allows a gratifying chemical to be delivered in a relatively safe manner. In a society where most have to struggle mightily to house and feed their families, these churlish prigs want to deny workers and youth even the small comforts or stress-relievers available to them.

The same capitalist rulers who rail against evils like addiction have nothing but contempt for the health and welfare of the masses—the poor and the homeless; the tens of thousands without access to clean water in ex-industrial wastelands like Flint; workers who toil at backbreaking, dangerous jobs their whole lives only to find health and retirement benefits ripped away by bosses slashing “excess costs.” To meet the real health needs of the population, the labor movement should be in the forefront of the fight for socialized medicine—for quality medical care free at the point of delivery! That includes treatment for addiction for those who want it.

The anti-vaping frenzy is the latest example of the periodic “moral rearmament” campaigns pushed by the American rulers in order to instill fear and subservience in those they exploit and oppress, and to extend the reach of the state into our private lives. In this racist capitalist society, it’s the workers, black people and all the oppressed who bear the brunt of government intrusion. And more often than not, it’s the liberal wing of the capitalist establishment that leads the charge. In June, the liberal mecca of San Francisco, where there’s an app for everything except combating homelessness (and they’ve built police robots to “deal with” homeless people), was the first to ban all vape products. And in Congress, the Democratic Party’s Rashida Tlaib (Democratic Socialists of America), railing at a looming vapeocalypse, lashed out at a witness who testified during a September 24 hearing that e-cigarettes were a “health miracle” that had helped her quit smoking. Tlaib, who suggested the woman was a “conspiracy theorist,” had moments before touted the truly ludicrous notion that secondhand smoke was “worse than directly smoking cigarettes.”

Karl Marx, who a century and a half ago laid bare the workings of this vicious capitalist system, wrote concerning English liquor laws: “The classical saints of Christianity mortified their body for the salvation of the souls of the masses; the modern educated saints mortify the bodies of the masses for the salvation of their own souls.” Like Marx, we draw the conclusion that only the victory of proletarian revolution and the establishment of workers rule on a world scale will put an end to the hideous exploitation and oppression of the working and impoverished masses. In a rational society organized around a collectivized economy, safer drugs and medicines would be by-products of qualitative scientific and technical advancement. Far from restricting personal rights, this social order would mark the beginning of human freedom, as people would finally have the time, resources and knowledge to develop their talents, and pleasures, in ways unimaginable to us today.