I have heard all your arguments before but to understand my argument you need to understand that I am not talking about the words that people use to justify their actions but rather the model of causality that a person has to hold to advance a particular idea.

For example: You can only justify using government violent power against person A for the benefit of B if you can justify that A is doing something to B against B’s will. In this case (and many, many others), leftist advance the idea that tobacco advertising constitutes a form of invasion or attack against people which forces them to make choices against their best interest (as leftist define it).

You say:

They do argue that marketing is influential and that how an addictive product is marketed should be regulated.

but “influential” can only justify the use of force (actual or threatened) if it subverts the will. If you look at leftist arguments about all forms of corporate advertising such as autos, fast-food or even politics, the repeated refrain is that the advertisement creates the behavior. They argue that if the advertisement did not exist, then the behavior would not exist.

(Which is another duel-model. Leftist have a near religious faith in the power of corporate advertising but mock conservatives over their fears that portrayals of sexual promiscuity or homosexuality will induce or normalize such behaviors in children. Leftist mocked conservatives concerns over Janet Jackson’s Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction but had she smoked a cigarette on stage they would have rioted.>

An important component of the MSA is the ban on tobacco marketing that targets minors.

This was, to put it bluntly, a lie on the part of anti-smoking puritans. In fact, the campaign to ban all cigarette ads began back in the 60′s. They did succeed back then in banning all ads on TV, even late at night, due to the Federal governments power over broadcast. The entire “think of the children” hysteria only began in the early 90′s after they found they couldn’t convince people to censor ads in print media.

No tobacco control advocate backs up their support for tobacco excise taxes by claiming that tobacco is a freely chosen vice.

Well, again, it nots what they say but rather what model of causation they must have in order to advance their ideas. If smokers are addicts, then increased cost will not induce them to quit. If you can stop engaging in a behavior just because you want to spend money on something else, then its not really addiction in the sense that most people use the word. If you can’t stop the behavior than having other people extract money from you using your compulsion is just cruel.

(As an aside, the idea that you take money from poor people so that you can alter their behavior as you see fit is just creepy. Here a again you must process a model of causation in which your judgement superceeds the judgement of others. This is one of those circumstances where I would argue that leftist treat poor people like livestock.)

So, I thought I could provide for you a more nuanced view of the other side.

It’s a blog post. I have to struggle to keep it under a 1,000 words as it is. I don’t have room for a lot of qualifications that don’t contribute substantially to the point I am making.

However, I need to correct some misleading statements in your description of the tobacco tax situation.

1) It’s misleading to say that leftists “fought for” the tobacco Master Settlement Agreement (MSA), unless, by “leftists” you mean the 46 Attorneys General that negotiated the civil settlement with the tobacco industry. Many of the Attorneys General represented red states. This is not to say that there weren’t liberals out there that wanted the MSA to happen.

2) Now its hard for me to know what the general leftist thinks, but tobacco control advocates do not argue that adults become robots when they see ads and that, “marketing by tobacco companies makes smoking look so desirable that it effectively subverts an individual’s ability to choose not to smoke.” They do argue that marketing is influential and that how an addictive product is marketed should be regulated. An important component of the MSA is the ban on tobacco marketing that targets minors. And most tobacco users began their addiction before the age of 18, so this really was a big deal. I think most conservatives or rightist would be opposed to the marketing of highly addictive substances to minors. After all, most conservatives are in favor of far more restrictive policies such as the federal government totally banning many recreational drugs.

3) No tobacco control advocate backs up their support for tobacco excise taxes by claiming that tobacco is a freely chosen vice. And all tobacco control advocates wrestle with the fact that while tobacco taxes are an effective tobacco control measure, they are regressive and therefore likely have negative unintended consequences. For instance, after a tax hike, a low-income mother may have to buy less food for her family because cigarettes cost more and she has not been successful in quitting. But the other side of this regressive tax issue is that since poorer people feel the tax more and since tobacco demand is somewhat responsive to price, poorer people will benefit more from a tax hike because they might be more motivated to quit by higher cigarette prices. But this benefit certainly does erase the reality that many poor smokers (like many rich smokers) will not be able to quit or cut back due to their dependency level and tax increase will impact them inequitably compared to a richer smoker.

So the reason why I type this is because I read Chicagoboyz in order to try to get a less caricatured view of the right. So, I thought I could provide for you a more nuanced view of the other side.

you have missed one important point that makes your argument about taxing smokes vs/akin to SS a false analogy…

Heh, yes, it is true that smokers pay more all around due to their shortened lifespans. However, my main point was not to link SS and smoking but rather just to provide two instances of dual-models.

Mix and Match. Women are excluded from all male military academies. Trot out theory A and require the Academies to admit women. The physical requirements of the academies are too difficult for women. Trot out theory B, and make the academies have different requirements for men and women.

Wash, rinse, repeat. YMMV