Vodka & Perestroika (was Re: yet another US electile disfunction commentary)

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxx>]

Michael Perelman asks:

> True enough, but don't the adverse consequences of tobacco hit the
> working-class
> harder?  So, discouraging smoking by taxes might have positive
> consequences over the
> long run.
>
> Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> >  Hey, sin taxes hit the working class harder than the rich.  So why
>  > not chuck tobacco taxers out of the window, too?

Naturally, given my choice of vice (coffee & cigarettes), I'm rather
prejudiced, so take it with a grain of salt....

I think that discouragement had better come from education & peer
pressure, rather than taxes & cops, on questions of health, both
under capitalism & socialism, but especially under capitalism.
Regulations of health, depending on how regulations are practiced,
can create a medium for social control (the creation of healthy,
docile, & productive bodies & populations).  There is a fertile
ground for retrenchment of gender oppression here also, through
regulations of pregnant women (with regard to drug use [medical or
recreational], smoking, alcohol consumption, etc.), for instance.
So, I'd urge American leftists (who have a soft spot for moral
concerns about health) to go easy on, nay, become at times skeptical
of, (what I think is a misappropriation of the Latin phrase) "Mens
sana in corpore sano" in American political discourse.

Did Gorbachev not launch Perestroika with an assault on vodka?

Yoshie