Sunday, November 29, 2009

The Next Prohibition

Paul, Ron. "Texas Straight Talk: The Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act.” Texas Straight Talk. Texas Straight Talk, 15 June 2009. Online Video Clip. 24 November 2009.



Read this article or watch this video

Congressman Ron Paul from Texas believes that this new law takes away more of American’s freedom and violates the Constitution. He believes that this new law also violates both the first and fourth amendment stated in the Constitution. His option on why he believes this law violates these amendments is because he thinks this law is going to create an outright ban on freedom to advertise. He states that he is not a supporter of tobacco and he believes it is a bad habit. Ron Paul says he believes smoking is a bad habit, but it is in people’s choice and that is how it should be treated. His point of view on this whole law is that he believes people should be educated on the health risks of smoking, but still have a personal choice whether to consume or not. Ron Paul believes not only are the rights of tobacco companies being taken away, but also the rights to freedom of choice of individuals are too. He states that the federal government needs to stay out of the health habits of the free people. The idea of a law on tobacco has disgusted him. Ron Paul believes that there are bigger issues that the government needs to be focusing on in this country rather than trying to regulate tobacco. The congressman believes that this country keeps moving farther away from original freedom that was created by our founding fathers. His overall option is that this new law is going to lead us into the next prohibition and ultimately hurt the economy more. Ron Paul supports that the rights to freedom of speech in advertising need to be restored back to the tobacco companies.

This source would be an intelligent one to use because it shows the point of view of congressman and his thoughts on the new law. The fact that this source provides the option of a higher ranked individual could help be more persuasive for someone answering my research question. This video shows the ideas of what will happen because of this new law. This source did a good job with supplying many different reasoning on why these companies should receive their rights back. Another strength of this source is that it stated he was not a smoker, but yet he still did not support this law. This statement shows that not only smokers disagree with this law, but some nonsmokers do too. Overall, I believe that this source did not contain any weaknesses because the author portrayed his point of view in a clear and precise way.