TAKE ME OUT OF THE NANNY SOCIETY

I CAN LIVE with the welfare society. The nanny society, on the other hand,
makes me nuts. By welfare society, I'm not referring to the old welfare
program, which has thankfully been reformed. Rather, I mean a general
willingness to spread the nation's wealth. Tax policy? Shift the burden
away from middle- and low-income workers. Universal health coverage for
every American? Bring it on. Some would call these views "liberal."

The nanny issues usually wear the liberal label, and I must now part ways.
Basically, I believe that an American citizen has the right to smoke
herself into an early grave, drink himself into a stupor or eat her way
into a size 20. And if an adult wishes to light up a joint and get high, I
certainly won't tell. (Here is where conservatives don the nurse's cap.)

The right to abuse one's health may not share a high perch with freedom of
speech, but it should be a right nonetheless. Nannies weren't running
things in the 18th Century, and so the idea probably never crossed the
Founding Fathers' minds.

In any case, the Fathers would have found themselves wanting under today's
strict rules. For example, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson grew
hemp, now a felony under federal law. Marijuana belongs to the hemp family.

Hemp was an American staple crop from 1776 to 1937. Washington and
Jefferson raised a noneuphoric variety, used to make rope and the paper for
sketching early drafts of the Declaration of Independence. (That said, one
could easily imagine Jefferson slipping in some "evil" hemp plants and
smoking them. He generally did as he pleased.)

The modern reasoning goes that industrial hemp looks something like its
mood-lifting cousin, so we can't have either. I ask, why not have both?

It is odd how conservatives tend to oppose legalizing pot, and liberals
oppose keeping tobacco use legal. This political division of nanny labor
produces schizophrenia in such progressive regions as the Northwest. Three
years ago, Washington State voters swept to victory an initiative letting
doctors prescribe marijuana for patients. This year, the same voters
overwhelmingly approved raising the state cigarette tax to $1.425 a pack,
the highest in the nation.

I say, make marijuana legal and leave tobacco alone. Same goes for booze,
and don't even jest about taxing fatty foods.

Such views render people like me useless on those
Liberal-versus-Conservative debate shows. I can see the producer
designating me as the persona from the Left, then demanding that I take
umbrage at NBC's decision to accept liquor ads.

Uncomfortable about forbidding us to use certain legal products, some
nannies hide behind the "Social Costs" argument: What is bad for your
health also costs taxpayers money. The social-cost accountants can be
highly selective in choosing numbers for their tabulation.

Take the case of tobacco. In a much-publicized study, the Centers for
Disease Control figured that smoking costs taxpayers $50 billion a year, or
89 cents a pack. They arrived at this number by adding up the medical costs
for smoking related illnesses -- hospital treatment, prescription drugs,
nursing home stays and so on.

The CDC study neglected to note that smokers tend to die younger, saving
taxpayers untold billions in spending on Medicare, Social Security, federal
pensions and other programs. Nor does it mention the immense pile of money
collected through cigarette taxes.

Add in these numbers, and you come up with a very different total. A
handful of economists have done so. Duke University's W. Kip Viscusi, for
example, figures that smoking actually saves society money, to the tune of
83 cents a pack.

Hey, I don't endorse heavy drinking or smoking. And I don't mind regulating
the use of these products when it comes to protecting others. Mildly
asthmatic, I appreciate rules that ban tobacco fumes in airline cabins.
Drunk driving, meanwhile, should be severely punished.

But as long as a product is legal, we need not automatically attach sin to
its use. A can of beer and can of Coke should be subject to the same levy.
If governments need more revenues, they can raise income or property taxes.
Base taxation on what a citizen can afford to pay, not on what he does in
his spare time. The nannies need a rest.

Froma Harrop is a Journal editorial writer and syndicated columnist. She
may be reached by e-mail at: fharrop@projo.com.