Abstract
In his twelve-year tenure, now ex-Mayor Bloomberg came to be called Nanny Bloomberg for having introduced an unprecedented number of rules and regulations in the area of public health, to which citizens were then subjected. He operated in many different areas, as he would say, for our own good. The question is: did it ever help and at what price? And: Cui bono?
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Notes
An overseer must look over, not over look. The word overseer illustrates the two senses of the word: passage or trajectory across [He looked the horse over. He trudged over the lawn.] or rising above, rising to a higher level [a flight over Bahgdad].
See for example: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/news/nanny-bloomberg
Jacob Sullum, For Your Own Good: The Anti-smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health. New York: Free Press, 1998.
See for example Gary Taubes, “Do we really know what makes us healthy.” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/16/magazine/16epidemiologyt.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
The Mayor’s “Bill to Raise the Sales Age from 18 to 21 for Cigarettes and Tobacco Products” recently promulgated states: “Electronic cigarettes are not regulated by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and contain nicotine, a highly addictive substance, and potentially harmful chemicals. Although the long-term effect of electronic cigarette use require further study, the FDA has expressed concern about their safety.”I fully expect, when this bill becomes law, that 18 year olds will begin to binge smoke the way they began to binge drink when the limit was raised to twenty-one. Not to mention the black-market it will generate among teenagers, further promoting disrespect for the law. Note too that prohibitions are always justified in the name of protecting the young. It was the principle motif behind the anti-alcohol campaigns during Prohibition. The Mayor chose to ignore A New Zealand study, frequently cited, that claimed to demonstrate that e-cigarettes were more efficient than the patch in helping people who wanted to stop smoking. The vapor inhaled is free of tars and ash; it consists mostly of water vapor; it administers a much smaller dose of nicotine than a comparable cigarette; its toxicity has not been demonstrated it.
Mark Kleinman, “Lets not panic about e-cigarettes.” http://www.samefacts.com/2013/09/wayward-press/lets-not-panic-about-e-cigarettes/
Ibid.
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Klein, R. Nanny Bloomberg. Soc 51, 253–257 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-014-9772-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-014-9772-3