I
live in San Francisco. Some group of people here who apparently possess
the legislative authority to do so decided to Ban Vape. This piece of
legislation is known as the Vape Ban. Why? When does it go into effect?
What are they banning—cartridges, the electric bit, all of it? Can
people still buy them elsewhere and bring them back, or buy them online
and have whatever’s banned shipped to their home? Is Juul still allowed
to have their big, shiny vape-selling coordination mechanism known as a
“Headquarters” downtown? I’m sure there are answers if you look into it.
Another
group of people apparently did look into it, and they decided it would
be best to Repeal the Vape Ban, and to do this, they’ve took it upon
themselves to recruit as much support in the effort as possible. The
lynchpin of the whole operation is canvassing the entire city with their
demands for a Repeal. Okay. How do we all help you with this? Is there a
referendum or something? The Repeal is supposed to happen in November, I
hear. Are we all headed to the polls? Where are they? What else will we
be voting about there? If not, should we try to find out who of that
first group of people is supposed to “represent” us and tell them to
undo what they’ve done? What’s stopping them from un-undoing the Ban? Do
we do this whole thing all over again if they do, or do we give up?
On
the way home from work the other day, I came across some members of the
Inner Party of the Repeal. (Who are they? I wasn’t asked to join.) The
colors of the movement are an urgent blue and bright yellow. They were
ostensibly collecting signatures for a petition in support of the cause,
and I wasn’t seeing anyone stop to sign. (Wait, isn’t this a voting
thing?) I passed them just the same, but I soon felt myself welling with
the desire to take a stand for personal liberty. Too many have been
taken from us of late, and many more are facing the threat. The least I
could do is my little part right there and then when the opportunity was
physically in front of me. I turned around and walked back to their
station.
We all exchanged
greetings, and I expressed my interest in signing the petition. They
took down my information—email and mailing address, of course. The
encounter was punctuated by this line of inquiry:
“Do you use vaping as an alternative to other tobacco products?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Do you vape at all?”
“No.”
“Okay, I don’t think we’ll call you closer to November, but thank you for your support.”
Huh?
So if this matter doesn’t affect me personally, my share in the sphere
of influence is intrinsically smaller? It would seem so. If I really
want to make a difference, I ought to head down to the nearest
convenience store and grab a few packs of Marlboros. My Hulu ad breaks
(sponsored by some public institution or nonprofit or whatever) all
point out my vulnerabilities as an urban youth to their allures,
however, and so I should express my hip sense of individuality by
resisting them. I’m at a loss.
Well,
I might not be endowed by my Creator to a healthy alternative to my
nasty cigarette habit, but I presume to know how to put a thought or two
together. I strongly considered writing a piece in support of the
effort. Filled myself with the fervor of cause, formulated that tried
and true “defense of liberty, no matter how small” argument, figured
what research I’d need to do to broach the subject, sat down at my
laptop, opened Word and popped a fresh browser tab. I never even
started.
What is all of this? What
a nightmare. What a very, very lame nightmare. So, every time the
government decides to do something, every single time, we’re meant to
individually evaluate whether it calls for some counteraction, what that
counteraction might be, how to organize to execute it, and then do
that, or else life as we know it is at stake? What happens when we run
out of eye-catching color schemes? What happens when we stop caring
altogether?
What we see here is an
unjust and iniquitous burden of the obligations of state. Power rises
spontaneously from the affected and interested, takes form in law, and
is imposed on the rest. Council Member So-and-So sees all over the news
that an addiction his generation DARE’d to kick is returning by way of
Big Tobacco’s devilish Mango Mist disguise, and then his friend caught
his kid taking a sick rip o’ the juice, and this will not do.
The
imposition of law forms another group of elect-by-want, and they do as
the previous. The Chancellor of the Repeal rallies the downtrodden
Vapemen to their just cause, painting the town blue and yellow in the
process. They’ve gone and made it everyone’s problem, which makes it my
problem. Do I hate children, or do I hate recovering smokers and
freedom? Abstention is tacit admission of the latter, and participation
is an uphill battle, a time sink, and tacit admission of the former.
Maybe the victorious Chancellor will ride his success right into the
election cycle and win a seat in the whatever, and he’ll get a whole
term’s opportunity to propose new awful legislation. Wouldn’t want to be
a one trick pony, the Vape Guy, right?
So
here we are, perpetually embroiled in fractured opposition of nonsense
rules made up by nonsense government, in constant fear of losing what
semblance of the liberties we still enjoy, only to be rendered
inattentive and fatigued when a true threat to the same arrives.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine the repeal and reinstatement of the Vape Ban, over and over, forever.
Sometimes,
the state must grant audience to a man or group’s rightful appeal and
hand down an unequivocal denial. The slightest opportunity by political
coercion is unlimited license to assemble it, and the endless cycle of
factious crisis and emergency powers continues. As long as there is a
way around the “no,” there will be a chance for whoever to get whatever
they want, and they are incentivized to draw from the energies of
whoever can do something about it to the fullest extent that they can.
Render unto Caesar.
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