Blog

What Has Happened to Personal Responsibility?

March 11th, 2024 by Kenneth Abrahams

The Boston Globe sent me an article that I almost deleted. Other than the fact it was the location of our family home many years ago, there are few things about the Brookline, Massachusetts tobacco ban of anyone born this century, that is of interest. It is a town near Boston of around 60,000 people. Like the City of Cambridge, it is a town with very liberal leanings. In 2020, they passed a law banning the sale of tobacco products to anyone born in this century. As you can well imagine, some business establishments and the tobacco and vape product manufacturers strongly objected and challenged the constitutionality of the law. This week, the Massachusetts Supreme Court upheld a lower court ruling saying that the law passed by Brookline is constitutional. Cities and towns, they said, have the right to determine policies and set age limits for things and that they are often the ones that change health policies and practices across the state. They saw no issue that it conflicts with the state age of 21. Something tells me that due to the tobacco industry’s deep pockets we have not heard the last of it.

What about all the other health concerns that are facing society? Is this simply the “gateway” law that will allow the floodgates to open for additional bans? In the not too distant past, cities have tried to or banned sugar filled sodas. While other locales have tried to tax them. Schools have removed vending machines that dispense sodas and salty snacks, replacing them with ones that dispense water, yogurt, and healthy snacks. McDonald's better watch their Big Macs, or they could be next. Have you ever looked at the nutritional information at a Mickey D’s restaurant or their website. If you are a McDonald's fan, I don’t recommend it. A Big Mac has 34 grams of fat. Based on a 2,000 calorie a day diet, that is a whooping 44% of your daily allowance. While the Double Quarter Pounder with cheese is 740 calories and 54% of your daily fat allowance. If you think Taco Bell or Kentucky Fried Chicken is a better option, depending on what you order, think again. Yes, as a nation we have an obesity problem but is legislation the best way to handle it?

Doubtful any of us remember the era of prohibition which ran from 1920 – 1933. It was a time where alcohol was illegal to produce, transport, sell, possess, or use. During that time, figures like Al Capone, and others, made a nice living supplying people with black market liquor. Despite the ban on it, people were able to find alcohol if they wanted it. Alcohol today is as big, if not a bigger, problem than it used to be. It is not only a health problem but one of safety as well. In 2022, Massachusetts had over 7,700 arrests for driving under the influence. Research tells us that most people get behind the wheel impaired many times before they ever get stopped. Often thought of as a problem more among men than women, alcoholism, heavy drinking, health issues, and even alcohol related deaths are on the rise among women, especially since COVID. Yet not only are we not talking about banning alcohol in 2024, but during the pandemic, at least in Massachusetts, liquor stores were considered “essential” businesses.

For the record, I don’t favor a return of prohibition, or of forcing fast food restaurants to lower the amount of fat in their food and mandating that they offer healthier menu options. I am in favor of people taking responsibility for their actions and accepting the consequences of their decisions. I have been overweight my whole life and for much of it in the morbidly obese category. For some strange reason I never thought about suing my mother, Frito Lay, Coca Cola, or any of the pizza places that I would head off to after school for a nice greasy slice or two of pizza, as a late afternoon snack. After all, it was my mom that made those sandwiches filled with mayonnaise ladened tuna fish or bologna with cheese and of course a bit more mayo. None of the individuals or corporations above force fed me those products. That, my friends is on me. Ask anyone that has battled obesity, it is a long road to get healthy and eating better.  Whether through weight loss programs, drugs, exercise, or medical intervention, it takes work to get the results you want. None of us gain the weight overnight, and we cannot lose it in a day. Weigh loss is a long journey, often making bad choices along the way.

Yes, I do believe that a minimum age for tobacco products, alcohol, gambling, and now cannabis makes sense, but to completely forbid anyone born after January 1, 2000, seems to be going a bit to far. Keeping alcohol and tobacco products out of the high schools is a great idea. More importantly is making sure that we are teaching those generations coming behind us that their actions have consequences, and they are responsible for owning up to the choices they make. Our house didn’t need a law banning us from buying or smoking cigarettes, we had several great deterrents, most notably my mother who was a smoker herself for many years. Like others in her generation, she struggled to quit smoking. It was clear the hold nicotine had on her, my father, and my uncles was a strong one. she didn’t want us to go down that path. Yet despite all the talks and the research about the damages of smoking, some of her children didn’t listen. For years, one of my siblings has had a myriad of dental issues. It was not caused by lack of brushing or not visiting the dentist often enough. Nope, lack of oral hygiene is not the villain in this story, it was years of smoking.

Despite spending a lot of this piece talking about food and tobacco products, it is much more about the lack of responsibility I see all around our society. Please don’t tell me this issue is strictly related to the youth of today, it is not. People have been looking for scapegoats or a person to blame for years. In an episode of MASH, two of the main characters, Hawkeye and Trapper, are helping a local orphanage by donating medical and other supplies. Trouble is, they are pilfering the supplies from Uncle Sam. To not get in trouble, they tell the nuns who run the orphanage that the supplies are being generously donated by Captain Tuttle, an officer they simply made up. To many times I see people looking for their own Tuttle’s to blame. Poor grades or a lack of a social life on a college campus is not the fault of the individual but the school and staff there. Issues at work or a lack of advancement in your company is rarely the fault of the person but often they believe it is a personal vendetta against them or some sort of DEI plan gone rogue. In the minds of some, the fact that others simply out worked and outproduced them simply couldn’t be the problem.

Taking responsibility for your actions, at times, isn’t easy. It is no fun when I get an email from a client asking where their contract is, and I reply that the issue is 100% my fault because I failed to submit the paperwork to Kim. Or that I need to apologize in responding to a request for information that I found in my email days after it was sent. Sure, I could simply say it was a system snafu or that we have been having email issues and that must be the culprit it seems far better to admit the mistake, own the error, apologize, and move on. Brookline and other towns are free to do as they wish but I’m not sure in the end they are really doing a public service.

About the author

If you don’t like the blog it was written by Captain Jonathan S. Tuttle (US Army retired). However, if you like it Ken Abrahams VP for Client Relations of FUN Enterprises, Inc. is the scribe. Although he started writing blogs years ago, they have been a lot more regular since the start of COVID. In just about 4 years, he has penned around 200 blogs on a wide range of topics. Opinions are those of the author and not the company. Hopefully, you have enjoyed reading them.

To find out more about the company go to our website www.funent.com you can also go to this link to sign up for our newsletter which comes out about 6 times a year    https://funent.com/subscribe-to-the-funny-pages/.  Our newsletter will tell you more about the company and the products and services we offer as well as some games, things to do, and the occasional cooking tip.