By Mark David Blum, Esq.
It was announced with great splendor and overwhelming grandiosity yesterday that America’s #1 favorite employer and overall good guy, Wegmans Markets, is going to halt the sales of cigarettes and tobacco products. In their own words and notwithstanding the large profit margins garnered by cigarette sales, the justification therefor is to remove an unhealthy product from their store shelves. Wegmans has graduated from neighborhood market to neighborhood Nanny.
I am not truly convinced of the benevolence of Wegman’s anti tobacco campaign. Whether they are really making more shelf room for beer or Doritos, or whether this move is just a publicity stunt to lure the Yuppies in to buy pate`, shrimp, or deep fried something or another, in reality the proclamation that the tobacco ban is for ‘health’ reasons rings wholly untrue and hypocritical.
But, if Wegmans is being honest in their efforts and really wants to make a difference, why not ban all products that are unhealthy and can cause medical problems if used properly. Perhaps Wegmans can set up a blood drawing station as you walk in so that your cholesterol and blood pressure can be checked thus limiting your selection of food products you can buy. At the cash register, the customer should stand on a scale and any food items that are not within parameters established for the customer’s weight cannot be sold.
Before I go further, I want to make it clear that some of my best friends are fat people. A lot of them are pretty cool. I have found they are just as kind and honorable and intelligent as are skinny people. Tolerating their Twinkie stained teeth or the stank of cooking grease on their clothes can at times churn my stomach but I do not object to working with them or dining with them or when I have had too much to drink, having sex with them. Recent medical news suggests that a sedentary lifestyle is healthier. Because there are so many fat people, one can only assume they are seen by many as beautiful and worthwhile. I know I do. If they were not, we would have bred them out long ago; as they did in Beverly Hills. This has nothing to do with them.
What really brings me to a boil is the greater hypocrisy in society. Fat people and smokers make the perfect example of how we have gone berserk in our thinking. We banish smokers, we tax them as hard as we can, they are looked down upon, frowned, ignored, disregarded, and considered “dirty” amongst the general population. At the same time, America is SUPERSIZING up for the new millennium. Airline seats are growing larger. So too are movie theater seats, household and office furniture, and automobiles. More food, fry it well, slather it with something, and don’t forget dessert.
Addiction is nothing more than an excuse. I choose to put that cigarette to my mouth. Only from my pocket can come the fire that burns away the cilia in my lungs. Same too with a Big Mac; unless there is a gun at your head, you are the one taking that next bite of mouth-watering savory deliciously greasy salty fatty carb-loaded machine-separated animal parts. You choose to spend your two free hours per night in front of the television instead of running laps around the block. The same rule applies to alcohol, heroin, and crack. We all make choices in our lives; not all are productive. It is simply ludicrous to blame the drug, the casino, or the Twinkies for our actions.
The day we accept this principle will be the day we move forward intellectually as a species. There will never come a time of absolute uniformity. Nobody can live a perfect lifestyle where everything done is for the betterment of the mind, body, and soul. Even if you did manage to perfect this ideal, still one day you will get very sick and die. Assuming you are not first hit by a bus. They say (whoever ‘they’ are) such a lifestyle is the goal for a longer more satisfying life. A point is made, however, that the years gained come at the end of your life. Personally, I would prefer the extra ten years or so to be between my 20’s and 30’s. Giving me my 80’s and 90’s may or may not be such a good idea depending on my savings and physical condition. It could be a living hell.
We are beating each other over the heads with taxes, insurance, and ostracism as we struggle through the confusion. If I smoke, my medical insurance premium is higher assuming I can get any insurance at all. Life insurance premiums are obnoxious in comparison to a non-smoker
Instead of Wegmans deciding for the public what is and is not in their best interest, the better idea is to let people vote with their feet. I will no longer visit the Carousel Mall and my Wegman’s discount card lies humbly in the garbage. It isn’t that I cannot refrain from smoking for an extensive period of time; I am after all, a well trained smoker. The bigger issue is who decides my life, fate, and health? I am not willing to delegate that decision making process to a market that sells tens of millions of dollars of unhealthy and dangerous food products.
My question is now that we have banned cigarettes, how much longer are we all going to be subsidizing fat people? Why do fat people get the right to shop til they drop (including their own battery powered shopping carts, but I have to go elsewhere? Wegmans is obviously not a community friendly market. Their new marketing scheme is draw in more fat people and cut out the smokers. Why – probably because smokers don’t tend to be fat lazy greasy slobs. We don’t consume as much garbage as your average human garbage scow. The great Wegman’s lie is that this whole issue is not about health, its about profits and there is more profit in fattening foods than there is in a pack of cigarettes. Cigarettes may taste great, but they also are less filling. That situation cannot be good for a food store business.
There are certain common purposes around which humans congregate in societies. Nobody should object to mollycoddling fat people. In New York, for example, a car seat law exempts fat kids from having to use special car seats. Insurance companies offer all kinds of incentives for policyholders to lose weight. Heck, there are even stop smoking programs that can be covered by insurance policies.
But the reason we Americans have congregated and organized our society is so that we can provide for each other’s health, education, and welfare. I am all for free choice in how one lives their lives. Lifestyle choices do not have to always be healthy and good. There is a lot to be said for those who choose to thin the herd early on. We should, however, make available 100% education and 100% health care for every citizen. Part of that should include the cost of helping those who choose to be idiots though it may drive up costs.
The fundamental reason why we should support this position is that we too retain for ourselves that very same freedom. Breaking a leg skiing is a lifestyle choice and we all share the costs of medical treatment and lost productivity. We want the opportunity to break our leg, clog our arteries, or fry our brain. It is not necessary that we do, but to deny ourselves mutual help and protection for doing so limits to a great extent the freedom we all enjoy.
Should Wegmans refuse to serve fat people and smokers? Of course not. We should feed the fat. Let them eat their cake and their bread. Let our hospitals and airlines burst at the seams from fat people. I have no objection to paying for their sins; so long as they do not object to paying for mine.
Liberty and freedom are at the core of what we believe. If we love our fellow man, then we should step aside and let people enjoy that liberty; even if the decisions made are stupid. The stupidity we protect is our own. Wegmans markets is living proof of that.
