Ecclesiastes. All is vanity. Thanks to Carl Trueman, I read a funny and effective take down of the secular fundamentalists who think tobacco smoke is more dangerous that carbon emissions. (No doubt, ironies of this sort attend most projects of transformation.)
The first folly, the logic that says scary pictures will scare adolescents from smoking:
Nonetheless this is a brilliant marketing campaign by the Australian authorities, doubtless designed to increase tax revenue from cigarette sales to junior high school boys. If I were in junior high I’d promptly find a way to buy (bribing an older brother or cousin, if need be) this incredibly disgusting flip-top box. And then I would be beside myself with eagerness to get to school the next day and usher my pals into the boys’ room to show off my gruesome, shoeless, sockless purchase.
In the World Gross-Out Champ-ionship, which is the preeminent event and main purpose of seventh grade, I’d retire the cup. At recess we’d show the pack to the girls, eliciting the highly coveted “ICK!” shriek. After school a certain kind of girl, the kind who made our hearts flutter (which Australia warns that cigarettes also do), would ask, “Can I try one?”
Of course we’d smoke the things. Who could resist? I can’t resist myself. As a confirmed cigar-smoker, I don’t care much for cigarettes. But the 13-year-old abides in us all. And it’s an affair of honor. I am devoted to Lady Nicotine. She has been insulted.
Folly no. 2, taxing sin depletes tax revenues:
Sales of legally packaged and lawfully retailed Australian cigarettes are down. No surprise given that most smoking is not done in seventh-grade boys’ rooms and that a pack of cigarettes in Australia costs nearly $16. (The Australian dollar is worth approximately the same as the U.S. dollar except it has a kangaroo on it instead of George Washington.)
But this decline in sales has been offset by a 154 percent increase in sales of contraband and counterfeit cigarettes coming from overseas. These cost half as much and arrive in the pleasant traditional wrappings of their brand. (Though, in the case of counterfeit cigarettes, with some risk of misspelling—Malrbolo.)
In calculating the 154 percent figure KPMG seems to have done its homework—surveying thousands of adult Australian smokers, analyzing Australian Customs tobacco seizure data, and sending out teams to pick up the litter of 12,000 empty cigarette packs in 16 Australian cities and towns.
Not to rei-mpute base motives to the Australian government, but plain packaging has been a revenue disappointment as well. KPMG estimates that, as of mid-2013, contraband and counterfeit cigarettes have cost Australia a billion dollars in lost taxes.
Do you suppose there’s organized criminal activity involved? Consider that a pack of smokes costs a buck and a quarter in Vietnam. This makes the mark-up for smuggled heroin look like the profit margin on a Walmart Black Friday loss leader.
The third folly, where will it all end?
Beer is certainly next, with pictures of drunken fistfights, snoring bums, and huge, gin-blossomed noses on every can. Airplane crashes kill a lot of people. No plane should be allowed to land in Australia unless it’s painted drab dark brown and bears an image of fiery carnage along its fuselage. Cars kill even more. Perhaps a banner showing lethal wrecks could be pasted across the inside of every car’s windshield. And there’s food. Make all food drab dark brown (something of a historical tradition in Australian cooking anyway) and deck the labels with naked fat men.
Fortunately there are those who are still willing to fight for property rights and freedom of choice. Raúl Castro, for one. Cuba has gone to the World Trade Organization to challenge Australia’s Tobacco Plain Packaging Act. Cuba argues that the act violates the internationally recognized rights of trademark owners and does not comply with the WTO’s agreements banning technical barriers to trade and protecting intellectual property.
When Raúl Castro is your Milton Friedman, you’re ready for the intellectual firing squad. The thought process of Australia’s legislators should be stood up against the wall of common sense. Care for a last cigarette?
Old Life 
C.S. Lewis: “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies.
The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval
of their own conscience.”
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The regulative principle makes a distinction between life and worship–no smoking in church.
http://thirdmill.org/newfiles/ric_pratt/PT.Pratt.Legalism.html
Pratt–You’ve heard these chains rattle too. They sound like this: “I am so committed to Christ that I’m going to figure out precisely what he wants you and me to do for him.” This kind of legalism isn’t new. It follows the Bible everywhere it goes. In a collection of Jewish Rabbincal sayings, a teaching appears which parallels Christian legalism of the third kind. It says, “We must build a fence around the law so as not to transgress the law itself.” To build a fence around the law means to develop a system of rules that go beyond what the Bible actually says. These rules specify what we are to do and not to do in great detail. If we keep these rules, so the thinking goes, we will never violate what the Scriptures actually teach.
Pratt–In reality, there is some wisdom in this outlook. “Put a boundary between yourself and the edge of a cliff. Keep a margin of safety.” It makes good common sense when hiking in the mountains. But it makes for terrible religion. It reduces the Christian life to constructing long detailed lists of right and wrong. Our hearts become preoccupied with figuring our precisely what God expects of believers in every imaginable situation, and with insisting that everyone meet those requirements.
Pratt–I once heard these chains rattle so loudly that I knew they were tightly wrapped around my own legs. A well-known preacher stood before us in a chapel service at Covenant College. He spoke on the need to mortify the flesh. Undoubtedly, we college students needed that encouragement. But he went much too far. At one point, the preacher shouted at us, “And if you eat breakfast before you spend time with the Lord in prayer, then you are putting the flesh before the Spirit!” What? Eating breakfast before spending 15-30 minutes in prayer is putting the flesh before the Spirit? It sounded holy and pious; it probably made a few people pray earlier in the day. I had to ask myself, “Where is that taught in Scripture?” The answer was plain. It isn’t.
Pratt–That’s the problem with this form of legalism. It seems to the legalists that they honor God by taking seriously the responsibility of applying the Bible to life. So, they make pronouncements of what God precisely expects of his people. The difficulty is that they have built a fence around the Bible. They go far beyond what the Bible actually says. They wrap chains around their feet and happily do the same to anyone gullible enough to let them. Jesus saw something similar in the Pharisees and rebuked them: “You load people down with burdens they can hardly carry, and you yourselves will not lift one finger to help them” (Luke 11:46).
IPratt—… one of the pejorative terms applied to some Puritans was “precisionist.” This title stuck because of the way many of them understood this aspect of the Christian life. They believed that God required them to figure out what he wanted them to do in precise terms, and to spend their energies making sure they met all of these requirements. The story is told of one of them, “Why are you so precise?” He replied with sincere conviction, “Because I serve a precise God.”
Pratt–I use to revel in that line. “There’s a man who took his faith seriously. He really loved the Lord,” I thought enviously. Now I hate the line. I guess in comparison to the relativism and lawlessness so rampant in our day, God is precise and we should all be “precisionists.” But let’s face it. We don’t usually talk this way with godless relativists. This kind of talk usually appears when Christians pressure other Christians to wrap the chains of long lists of increasingly precise responsibilities around their feet.
Pratt–“Do not handle! Do not taste! Do not touch! These are all designed to perish with use, because they are based on human commands and teachings. Such regulations indeed have an appearance of wisdom, with their self-imposed worship, their false humility and their harsh treatment of the body, but they lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.” (Colossians 2:21-23). That’s the way Paul spoke of the third kind of legalism. When we legislate what God expects of us in ways that go beyond what the Scriptures teach, we are not pursuing godliness. We are piling on the chains of legalism.
Pratt–Now to say something positive about the Puritans. They had another doctrine that is important to remember at this time. They called it the “liberty of conscience.” During the 17th century the Church of England tried to force a Prayerbook on all churches. Many Puritans refused to accept the Prayerbook because they felt it violated their freedom, their liberty of conscience. The argument went something like this. The Bible tells us to pray. It also tells us to pray in worship. But it does not tell us precisely when, how, or what to pray. For this reason, these matters must not be legislated. They are matters of freedom for Christians to pursue in different ways..”
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“David VanDrunen in his recent book, Divine Covenants and Moral Order, which offer a very nuanced account of the relationship of church and state, such that the identity and task of the church is not confused with that of transforming society”
http://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2014/06/bowdoin-told-us-to-go
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When anti-smoking wasn’t funny:
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