The weird side of the anti-smoking movement

Well, maybe I should say the “excessively weird” side since they tend to be weird enough as it is.

Either way, this sort of weirdness simply reinforces the suspicions that there is a definite moral side to the issue. While many would claim that this is simply a health issue, there has always been an underlying suspicion on our part that health is a convenient cover for a much more personal issue to many of these people – and that they are using public health and lawmakers to push their morality on the rest of us.

Well, now ASH, one of the more radical and public organizations, has revealed the truth of the matter by actually posting this “Moral Rearmament Pledge” at the top of their website:

A MORAL REARMAMENT PLEDGE
WORLDWIDE

I pledge allegiance to the TEN COMMANDMENTS.
And to the humanity for which it stands.
One world united in harmony.
With liberty and justice for all

by Ethel R. Wells
an ASH Trustee

And if you thought that was weird, it gets even more bizarre when get deeper into it:

GENOCIDE was the first and most important crime against humanity that was to be wiped out by International Law at the Nuremberg Trials. Too many countries have violated this law over too many years.

We need to have an INTERNATIONAL LAW ENFORCEMENT CORPS under the UN to promptly stop the act of Genocide on an emergency basis.

Uh huh. While this may seem like something you’d find on a “save Darfur” site, it’s an anti-smoking site – the genocide being referred to is presumably the genocide being perpetrated by the tobacco companies against their customers.

These people give me the heebiest of jeebies! Seriously, this is a sick crusade of morality to people like this. We have enough trouble with the nannies out there, but going up against people who see it is a moral issue is no different than going up against terrorists who feel morally obligated to blow you up because you disagree with them. How do you rationalize with people like this? How do you deal with a well-funded, lawsuit-happy group of zealots who are operating on moral grounds?

As weird as this is, it’s even more scary.