From Larry Welshon, citizen of Edgewater:
I don’t use flavored tobacco — but who am I to say you shouldn’t? Your City Council unanimously agrees that we should NOT have freedom of choice and that we cannot handle personal responsibility. Last week they passed through first readings a ban on flavored tobacco sales. Their argument seems a well-meaning, if hypocritical, blend of fact and fiction. To paraphrase…
Tobacco companies produce flavored products to entice and hook children, especially children of color. [True]
The fact that these products are illegal for minors to purchase doesn’t prevent their acquiring them, because their parents, older siblings, or friends will obtain them on their behalf. [True]
Therefore, the City must ban the sale of flavored tobacco to keep it from kids. [False]
Lest you accuse Council of governmental overreach, they do graciously concede that adults may still buy and use regular tobacco…at least for now. But what’s to stop our benevolent leaders from making the very same argument to outlaw all forms of tobacco? Why not booze, too? It’s bad for us and illegal for kids to buy, yet they obtain it from older people and use it to their detriment. Is this not exactly the same logic being used with regard to flavored tobacco?
Or how about our great cash cow, pot? As a teacher in this area for more than 25 years, I’ve seen the devastation wrought on children by their illegal use of marijuana obtained for them by older people. If saving kids is your priority, and laws restricting sales to adults are not working, I fully expect an ordinance to ban marajuana sales in our city — for the children!
Ah, but wait — our city garners well over $300,000 in annual revenue from that product.* The wisdom of Colorado voters to allow legal sales of pot and the wisdom of previous councils to approve pot shops in our city are recent decisions. In time, the damage done to children from the use of pot obtained from their elders will become clear: altered brain development, problems in school, impaired cognitive abilities, physical illness, etc.
Why not nip that in the bud (so to speak)? Let’s enact new ordinances to shut down the pot shops, and while we are at it, let’s become a dry and tobacco free city. My guess is that the big boys (Target and King Soopers) might object and our City revenue would plummet.
At the last Council meeting, a small shop owner who sells flavored tobacco explained that he will have to lay off workers because of the proposed ban. Council, explain why it’s okay to sacrifice Mr. Anisur Rahman of the Shop N Save at Harlan and 20th? Because he’s just a small business owner and sells tobacco, not pot? Is his contribution to the city’s tax base expendable (along with his business and his employees)? Why are you punishing an immigrant entrepreneur who bothered to speak to you?
Dear leaders, thank you for protecting us from ourselves — but where will you stop? You could substitute almost anything you don’t like (but which people enjoy) for the words “flavored tobacco” and justify infringing on all manner of individual choice.
In the absence of meaningful debate by Council members, power has gone to their heads. These young do-gooders, many of them recent arrivals, are emboldened by what amounts to one-party rule. With dissent discouraged — even on Council, where nearly every decision is unanimous — they cut themselves off from the more grounded perspectives of their constituents. Members of Council lined up a parade of “experts” from outside the city to justify their predetermined outcome. The few citizens and the businessman who spoke were dismissed in Council’s Great Leap Forward.
Council members: before second readings, I urge you to reconsider whether it is the place of government to protect people from themselves. As legislators, you must discuss your principles regarding where, and how far, governmental power may be exercised on citizens (at least if you want to uphold your oath to the U.S. Constitution). That conversation is absent in your conversations and the sky appears to be your only limit.
Citizens, beware: assuming they know what’s best for us, Council clearly feels free to push its own political agenda. After all, wouldn’t it be better for society if we were to outlaw all addictive substances? (If that’s the case, I suggest we start with Council members’ addiction to political power.) Who knows, might be a good time to stock up on your favorite addiction, whether that’s Rocky Road ice cream or Colt 45 (which, like flavored tobacco, was targeted to people of color).
Council will take a final vote on this ordinance at second readings on August 3rd. Speak up now if you value individual liberty and wish to check governmental power. Stay silent if you are comfortable with eight elected officials telling you what you can and cannot enjoy.
*The $300,000 figure, while massive, is only what we get back from the state and doesn’t include our own 3.5% tax on pot — so the actual total is substantially greater.
Joel has been a resident of Edgewater, Colorado with his family since 2012. He is the Executive Director of local education nonprofit Edgewater Collective and Editor of the Edgewater Echo.
“Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.” William Pitt the Younger.
And remember, when you give away your liberties, you do so for your descendants as well. I also note that lung cancer rates continue to rise, decades after smoking rates started falling.