Slate: Lords of the Realm of Illogic I

William Saletan’s latest piece comparing the “war on smoking” to an upcoming “war on obesity” rests on two clearly erroneous underlying premises, one of them fatal. The somewhat less important one is the uncritical relating of the claim of “federal officials” that “would soon surpass tobacco as the chief cause of preventable death.” But, unlike tobacco, obesity as an independent variable is in fact a trivial source of preventable death. Eating trans-fats-laden food and the other behaviors Saletan discusses do have potentially serious deleterious health effects, but this is true whether the behaviors make one obese or not. Since he mostly discusses the behaviors, though, this doesn’t necessarily sink his argument.

What does sink the argument is that the central analogy is self-evidently specious. He spends the first paragraph discussing “bans” on smoking. But, of course, none of these are “bans” per se; they are bans of smoking in enclosed public places. Kind of odd–tobacco doesn’t become less toxic when you do it in your home, does it? Oh, right–these restrictions on smoking are put in place because smoking directly affects third parties. In one of the linked articles, Denmark’s health minister actually grasps the issue: “The government’s goal is very clear: to know that you can walk around without being exposed to cigarette smoke against your will.” Since I’ve never had someone force-feed me fries at a bar, Saletan’s whole argument is rendered moot. The legitimate reason for regulating smoking is not to control the tradeoffs that individuals make between pleasure and health risks, but to prevent people from being involuntarily exposed to health risks. The government does have a role in regulating unhealthy foods in some of the ways it regulates tobacco by ensuring that the public is making informed choices; it is good policy for the government to require labels on fast food, educate the public about trans-fats and other health risks, etc. But the way Saletan frames the debate obscures more reasonable solutions.

And what’s odd about this is how lazy it is. Saletan can’t possibly be so obtuse as to not understand the difference between risking your own health and risking the health of others, just as he can’t possibly believe that every federal election is a plebiscite on the legality of abortion. And, yet, he’s willing to make these arguments anyway. That neither he nor his employers can be bothered to think through his arguments beyond the most superficial level, or that he doesn’t think his audience will notice, says a lot about the norms of contemporary punditry.