One of my pet peeves is people who hide their moral disapproval behind a mask of public concern. Two recent incidents on the radio reminded me this sort of faux good samaritan attitude is still alive and well. The first was a report about a safer kind of cigarette developed by a British company. Instead of cheering this result as potentially saving the lives of smokers anti-smoking advocates condemned it out of fear it would encourage more smoking. The second was a discussion about the number of highway deaths caused by drunk drivers which called for lower limits on blood alcohol content (BAC).

It is not that either position is necessarily wrong, it could be that the safer cigarette will actually increase smoking deaths and it could be that a lower threshold for drunk driving will save lives. What infuriates me is that both claims are made without looking at the statistics. It also could be that a safer cigarette would save far more lives than it would cost. It also could be (in fact I think it likely) that most alcohol induced accidents are caused by people already violating the drunk driving laws. It is entirely possible that stricter limits on BAC would cause people to take the drunk driving laws less seriously in addition to spending time and money prosecuting slightly tipsy drivers which could have been used to enforce the existing laws.

Contrast these knee jerk reactions to cigarettes and alcohol to the reactions people have to similar, but less morally charged, situations. Where are the condemnations of low fat cheesecake? After all that too could encourage people to engage in an unhealthy activity. What about laws making it illegal to drive on less than four hours of sleep? After all being sleep deprived can have just as severe an impact on reaction times as being drunk. The reason we don’t hear these laws being pushed is because the motivation behind these comments is as much moral disapproval as public safety. The reason the anti-smoking campaigners don’t feel the need to look at the statistics is because they find smoking morally distasteful. They want to eliminate smoking not make sure the enjoyment people get from cigarettes outweighs the cost. Many of these same advocates even oppose completely tobacco synthetic nicotine cigarettes which eliminate or drastically reduce the vast majority of smoking dangers.

Similarly the motivation to strengthen laws against drunk driving is as much to punish those bad people who drink and drive as it is to actually save lives. When people consider laws that restrict tired people from driving or old people from driving they worry about issues like compliance and inconvenience for these groups. In contrast people don’t consider the inconvenience to party goers or sports fans when advocating more stringent laws on drunk driving and instead of measuring costs and benefits they adopt the same ‘get tough’ attitude we see in other morally charged issues like drug abuse.

It is annoying enough when people try and unnecessarily force their value judgments on others. Just because you value your health more than the pleasure of nicotine doesn’t mean everyone does. However, it is absolutely infuriating when people do so in the name of public concern. This is especially outrageous when the attitude actually harms public welfare as I think is happening in the smoking situation. I’m not sure if that is actually the case in these two particular situations but the replacement of measured consideration with moral outrage tells me it is only a lucky coincidence if that isn’t happening here.