Campaigns Against Tobacco, Soda and Junk Food

Mexico: “Health Fascism” Against the Poor

We print below an article translated from Espartaco No. 40 (February 2014), published by our comrades of the Grupo Espartaquista de México.

Imitating his U.S. imperialist overlords, ten years ago [Andrés Manuel] López Obrador, then [bourgeois-populist Party of the Democratic Revolution] PRD mayor of Mexico City, decreed the tyrannical anti-tobacco law that drove all smokers from offices, restaurants, bars and every public building. A few years later, Congress approved a similar law at the national level. At the same time, increasing taxes have caused the price of a pack of cigarettes to soar—in the case of Marlboros, Benson & Hedges and others, from 20 pesos in 2007 to 45 pesos in 2014. Nowadays, the age-old pleasure of smoking—or, at least, of smoking decent tobacco—is a luxury out of the daily reach of the working class and poor. What’s next? The total prohibition of tobacco use, according to the InterAmerican Heart Foundation (one of the main anti-tobacco groups in Mexico).

These anti-tobacco laws are part of a wider campaign aimed at regimenting the entire population. Behind this campaign is the “health fascist” ideology: the notion that the state, supported by a movement of “citizens” against “vice,” should decide what can be consumed. The usual excuse for these laws is based on the supposed need to protect non-smokers from tobacco smoke’s harmful substances. The truth of the matter is that medical evidence regarding the effects of “secondhand smoke” is simply not conclusive. Various serious studies that have attempted to establish a health risk from secondhand smoke have had to come to the same conclusion: there is no significant statistical correlation. The idea of protecting the supposed “passive smoker” is simply ridiculous considering that Mexico City is one of the world’s most polluted cities, where tons of animal and human fecal matter float in the air every day. It’s true that tobacco smoke is an irritant—as is any other type of smoke. In any case, the obvious solution would be to provide adequate ventilation, but that wouldn’t be profitable, so it isn’t even an option.

Karl Marx, who scientifically explained the functioning of the ruthless capitalist system, wrote about English anti-liquor legislation: “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.” The “beautiful people” and the government are now going after consumers of sodas, snacks, baked goods and other food that the Congressmen deem to have an excessively high caloric content. It was the PRD, again, that led the charge to impose a “special tax” on these products, through which, “in addition to the benefit of tax collection,” they seek to combat obesity…and “psychosocial inadaptability”! If the class bias wasn’t sufficiently evident in the case of tobacco, it’s simply shameless in the case of soda and “junk” food. A study by the National Institute of Public Health from last year states the obvious as a reason to approve the new law: “Reduction in the consumption of soda due to an increase in its price would be greater in the poorest families and those living in extreme, high and medium-to-high poverty areas.” According to this institute, “These individuals would replace soda consumption with water or milk.” This assertion is completely arbitrary. This “study” doesn’t even take into account that milk is generally more expensive than soda, even with the new tax (not to mention lactose intolerance, which is much more common among indigenous peoples of the Americas than among those of European ancestry).

Almost a fifth of the population lacks access to basic foodstuffs. At least a million and a half children suffer from malnutrition. The state has been gradually dismantling health services, which are inadequate and insufficient to begin with. Workers routinely die because the ruling capitalist class doesn’t want to spend money on workplace safety—remember Pasta de Conchos [a mine explosion that killed 65 miners]. Workers and peasants die because they can only afford to live in sheet metal and wood shacks built in areas with a high risk of natural disasters—remember Hurricane Manuel and Hurricane Ingrid. Behold the interest of the government in the health of the population! The above-mentioned study asserts that the multimillion-peso revenue to the state resulting from the new taxes would cover “around 30 percent of obesity expenses for the country.” It’s simply grotesque that the greedy bourgeoisie wants to exert moral pressure and put the financial burden of the capitalist system on the poor.

In the face of the starving Parisian masses’ demand for bread on the eve of the Great French Revolution, Queen Marie Antoinette suggested: “Let them eat cake.” But even this infamous Austrian didn’t think of demanding that the poor pay a “special tax” for it—and, even so, we should add that her insults cost her her head. These absurd taxes simply reflect a gratuitous cruelty, trying to make inaccessible for the majority some small pleasures of everyday life—like eating a snack cake, drinking an ice-cold coke, smoking a cigarette. Obesity is, needless to say, a health problem. But instead of these tyrannical stupidities, what is needed is free universal health care, access to a varied and plentiful diet, decent housing—and it would be nice if workers had sufficient free time in order to play a sport (or sit down to read a book or watch TV, if they so desired). But that requires the overthrow of the capitalist system; it requires an internationally collectivized and planned economy.

It’s no secret that smoking is bad for your health, and nobody has much faith in the nutritional value of Coca-Cola or Twinkies. But everyone has the right to choose their own poison. As far as we’re concerned, people should be able to read, eat, drink and smoke whatever they please, and enjoy whatever consensual activities they like, without having the police, courts, bosses and totalitarian snobs intruding in their business.