The Freedom Bulletin

Mayor Tom Menino of Boston has decided to ban all non-diet soda, juice with added sugar, sweetened ice tea, refrigerated coffee, and energy drinks on city-owned property.

“I want to create a civic environment that makes the healthier choice the easier choice in people’s lives,” he said.

But with the exception of choices that violate other people’s rights, government should not take a position on which choices are better than others and should not try to make some choices easier than others. It would be one thing for Menino to require that healthy drinks be available alongside soda, but by banning soda and other sweet drinks on city property, he is placing an undue burden on people who want to drink them.

The chief of the Boston Public Health Commission justified the ban by saying that ”Medical costs for an obese patient are about 42 percent higher a year than for a patient with healthy weight.”

But this shouldn’t be a reason to pressure people into being thin. We should have a system in which people pay for their own medical expenses, because when medical costs are paid for collectively by society, society has an incentive to control people’s behavior so that medical costs are as low as possible. In such a system, it is difficult to maintain individual liberty, as the soda ban shows.

The FDA decided on Wednesday to ban “Four Loko” and other alcoholic drinks with caffeine in them, saying that such drinks dangerously mask the effects of alcohol, appeal to young people because of their cheap prices and colorful containers, and have been linked to various hospitalizations. Manufacturers of such drinks now have to remove the caffeine within 15 days or their products will be pulled from the market.

Last week, the FDA announced that it would begin requiring cigarettes to have warning labels that cover half the package. They are trying to decide between 36 condescending, sometimes gruesome images including diseased lungs and teeth, screaming babies, dead bodies, and people having heart attacks.

What do these two things have in common?

They are both infringements by the FDA upon people’s liberty. Banning caffeinated alcoholic drinks forcibly takes that option away from people, but putting graphic images on cigarettes also violates people’s right to smoke by punishing them for that choice with social stigma and disgusting images. By banning some drinks and punishing people for smoking, the FDA violates people’s rights to live their lives however they wish, as long as they do not infringe upon others’ rights to do the same.

People have the right to choose what goes into their bodies, including things that are dangerous and unhealthy. You don’t have the right to assault someone or destroy property while drunk on Four Loko, but that doesn’t mean it should be illegal to drink Four Loko; it just means that it should be (and is) illegal to assault people and destroy property. Similarly, you don’t have the right to make other people pick up the tab for medical services that result from your smoking and drinking, but that doesn’t mean people should be punished for smoking or drinking; it just means that we should create a system where people have to pay for their own medical services.

Some experts are criticizing the FDA’s decisions, saying, for example, “It’s just one more example of the FDA reaching into a practice that people can, and often do, do safely and trying to eliminate it.” And as Jeff Jacoby of the Boston Globe writes, ”Smoking is unhealthy, no question about it. The loss of freedom and self-respect is more hazardous by far.”

The Massachusetts Bureau of Health Care Safety and Quality recently approved a system that increases doctors’ ability to monitor people’s prescription history. Previously, the Department of Public Health monitored a database tracking prescriptions for only a few drugs, but doctors did not have the ability to view the database. Now, even more medications are included in the database, pharmacists are required to update it, and doctors have full access to it.

Needless to say, paternalistic and anti-liberty people fully support this attempt to fight “doctor shopping” – going to more than one doctor to get prescriptions for the same drug. But I see it as the government stamping out the last tiny, pathetic remnants of freedom that are left in the American medical system.

It is bad enough that people are required by law to have a doctor’s permission to have medications. To give doctors access to people’s prescription history, making it even harder to obtain medications, just violates people’s rights even more. As I recently explained, people have the right to control what happens to their own bodies. Doctors have no right to deny people medications that they want and are willing to pay for, and they have no right to know anything about our medical history unless we want to tell it to them.

Here’s a radical idea: Why not repeal the Durham-Humphrey Amendment and the paternalistic medical culture that goes with it? Why not have all medications available in stores and allow people (with or without a doctor’s advice) to decide for themselves what to purchase? Then we wouldn’t have to worry about “doctor shopping.” People would have no need to lie to doctors or beg for their permission for the medications that they want. We could independently and autonomously make our own decisions and would have the final say over what happens to our bodies.

People have the right to do anything, as long as it does not violate the rights of others. The fact that an action is risky or unhealthy does not change this. The new prescription monitoring system might improve people’s health, but more importantly, it decreases our liberty.

In a Boston Globe opinion piece today, Tom Cosgrove argues against allowing casinos in Massachusetts:

“New revenue,’’ though, is just casino-speak for a new tax: a sucker tax on those willing to plunk down cash on tables tilted sharply toward the pit bosses. A sucker tax on those willing to sit at slot machines ergonomically designed to keep players in thrall of the lights and levers for hours at a time – complex algorithms creating the illusion of near-victory as wallets empty.

I’m not sure whether Cosgrove is saying that gambling itself amounts to a tax (which would be completely false because people can choose whether or not to gamble but people are required by law to pay taxes) or whether he is just arguing against taxing gambling. I’m going to assume the latter.

Although I am generally anti-tax, I favor bringing casinos to Massachusetts. I believe that taxes on gambling are much less objectionable than income taxes because people can choose whether or not to gamble and thereby choose to avoid the tax, while everyone is forced to pay the income tax. The government could then use the new revenue to cut the income or sales tax (it won’t, of course, but it should).

I don’t buy the paternalistic argument that casinos are bad because they cause gambling addiction. If you choose to gamble, that is your choice. If you choose to spend all your free time gambling and to lose all of your money gambling, that is also your choice. The presence of casinos does not force people to gamble. In fact, by banning casinos, the government is hurting people who otherwise would gamble, because it’s stopping them from doing something they want to do.

I don’t see any good reason to ban casinos in Massachusetts. They provide a fun activity for many people (I myself don’t gamble because I don’t want to lose money, but just because I don’t find something fun doesn’t mean other people don’t), and taxing them might allow other taxes to be decreased. Why not allow casinos?