Mayor Bloomberg thinks cigarettes are bad for you and should be kept out of sight, like porn:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, fresh off a defeat in his campaign to limit large servings of sugary drinks, proposed legislation Monday requiring stores to put cigarettes out of public sight and to increase penalties on the smuggling and illegal sales of cigarettes.
Mr. Bloomberg said at a news conference that the proposal would make New York the first city in the nation to keep tobacco products out of sight. He said smoking remained a leading cause of preventable death, killing 7,000 New Yorkers a year.
As an ex-smoker, I enthusiastically endorse Bloomberg's condemnation of nicotine-delivery systems. As an example why, here's a dismayingly great (and alarmingly painful) essay about loving your dad, a smoker:
We pleaded with him, of course, to treat himself better – though always
with trepidation, since the subject annoyed him and, if pressed, could
send him into a rage. Most of the time we did not even get to the
subject, he was so adept at heading it off with a joke: when a man who
is quite visibly at risk of heart attack, stroke and cancer crushes out
what is left of a six-inch mentholated cigarette before getting to work
on a lethal fried meal ("a hearty repast" as he would have called it),
clinks his knife and fork together, winks at you, and says, with a
brogue, "Heart smart!" you are disarmed.
From a memoir by John Jeremiah Sullivan, in The Guardian.
It's important to point out that Bloomberg's "nanny state" measures have effectively reduced smoking in New York City, saving many lives and much money. From the New York Times story today:
Unlike some other changes whose effect has so far been uncertain, like the ban on artificial trans fats and the posting of calorie counts in restaurants, the consequences of the smoking limits seem fairly clear-cut.
The adult smoking rate dropped to 14.8 percent in 2011 from 21.5 percent
in 2002, at the beginning of the Bloomberg administration, Dr. Thomas
Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said Monday. The drop was
particularly steep among young adults, which suggested, experts said,
that they were not picking up the habit in the first place.
And here's someone who cares not a whit about your health, from her talk at CPAC:
Is it just me, or does touting a Big Gulp make Sarah Palin look really stupid?
Kit Stolz 
Sipping coffee, reading your fine column, three thoughts struck me:
I am immune from cause of death statistics.
Stupid put Sarah onto the speaker circuit and will keep her there for many years, a phenomena of America’s odd New Luddite anti-intellectual murmur in so many arena and parades.
A backlash against pious Authoritarianism can easily bite Bloomberg, but I’m sure he’ll be comfortably out of town.
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Just returning to put John Stuart Mill on the table and to be sure you see recent work by Jason Pontin
The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. …
Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.
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Thank you for your incredibly thoughtful comments, Brian. No one (in my experience, at least) wields logic more powerfully than JS Mill. (Plus, because he’s a good writer, he’s underrated as a philosopher.) But I wonder if Mill wouldn’t make a distinction between regulating tobacco, and punishing smokers. Most smokers today want to quit, but many simply can’t. Given that tragic fact, to want to make tobacco as expensive and obscure as possible, especially for vulnerable young people, is a kindness, not a cruelty.
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Here in taiwan, the cig packs now have the most ugly photos on front abd back showing lip cancer, lung cancer images, etc, but the cigaretters are sold at the local conveninece stotes with these ugly images facing the public as they pay for items at the front counter. so even those of us who do not smoke MUSt look at these ugly photos and i am sick of them! yes, put the actual cig packs out of sight, and let the clerks get them for those customers who want them frok BEHIND a wall….
as for Palin, she looks both dumb and fat…..
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