The next edition of the Random House Dictionary will contain the term "tobacco Nazi" among its definitions. This is indicative of the degree to which the anti-tobacco movement has become identified with totalitarian extremeism and the nasty reputation its tactics have earned.
Now that the National class action case is about to get under way in San Francisco one wonders what will happen if it succeeds.
Will the anti-tobacco forces wake up at all to the fact that their methods have become so hateful as to earn the characterization?
Will they recognize the parallel between their efforts to totally eradicate the use of tobacco with such slogans as "Smoke Free by 2000" and the genocide practiced by the Nazis?
Are they even aware of the semantic validation of the use of the term "tobacco Nazis" per the historic record of the anti-tobacco policy practiced by the Nazi regime in Germany? A policy well documented in Professor Rober N. Proctor's paper "The anti-tobacco campaign of the Nazies: a little know aspect of public health in Germany."
(See: http://www.junkscience.com/news/nazis.htm & http://www.forces.org/evidence/evid/nazi.htm) Or will they immediately recoil into a posture of victimization protesting that they, not smokers, are being discriminated against and deprived of their rights?
Will they realize that a philosophy of live and let live and a policy of accomodation is not only possible but desirable?
Or will the more rabid among them become even more belicose and inconsiderate if the constitutionality of their major victory is questioned and the tobacco "settlement" reversed and as a result resort to even more subversive efforts and despicaable means to have their way uber alles? In other words, will we be faced by a bunch of tobacco neo-Nazis?
Unfortunately, to the degree that the California class action proceeds and succeeds, some such reaction will likely manifest among the more zealous and misguided adherents of the anti-tobacco faithful -- those who see the struggle as a pseudo moral battle rather than in social terms and are incapable of distinguishing between non-smokers rights and the wholesale rape of civil liberties.
If this happens they deserve nothing more than counter actions as inconsiderate at their own.
