In less than ten days, California will ban the sale of menthol cigarettes and flavored vapes in the name of keeping the population safe from ourselves. It’s sort of a theme here – if you’re not going to make the right choices, the government will do it for you.

You have 10 days left to smoke all the menthols your can in California. pic.twitter.com/OYqYcgWMfD

— Kira (@RealKiraDavis) December 11, 2022

This was a referendum, so technically the people voted for it, but that really is just a technicality. In fact, it was already a law, but the state was required to put it to a vote for the 2022 cycle to make it permanent. It’s not hyperbole to claim the California government will do your choosing for you if you make the “wrong” choice. It isn’t uncommon for the Governor to nullify something Californians have voted for in the name of correcting our “wrong” choices. In 2012, Californians voted to keep the death penalty, and in 2016, Californians voted to speed up the death penalty process. Governor Newsom did not agree with our votes, and nullified the death penalty in 2019. We voted for it…twice. It was the “wrong” vote and the will of the people was overturned with the stroke of a pen.

The flavored tobacco products ban was added to the 2022 ballot and passed with bipartisan support among voters. Yes, many conservatives and Republicans voted for it in the name of “keeping people safe.” Rest assured, if the measure had not passed, the ban would simply have come as another form of legislation.

Sacramento gets what Sacramento wants.

I’ll point out the obvious here – that’s what I do as a professional shouter of opinions. The Golden State is only interested in controlling the lives of the law-abiding citizens, because law-abiding citizens follow the rules. Anyone who has chosen not to follow the basic rules of societal living is given a pass. Productive citizens are not allowed to freely use plastic straws, plastic bags, or flavored tobacco products. Productive citizens can’t surf alone in the open ocean during a pandemic. Come 2024, they won’t be allowed to use gas-powered tools like leaf blowers or lawn mowers, and Governor Newsom recently announced that by 2035, gas-powered vehicles will no longer be available for purchase.

If you are a…less-than-productive citizen, you have no rules. You can sleep on the sidewalks of residential neighborhoods, next to schools and community centers. You can put up a tent and block the sidewalks and no one can stop you, not even the police. Productive citizens simply must walk in the streets rather than use the thing that is there specifically to provide a safe place to walk – the sidewalk. You can defecate and urinate (and masturbate) in front of a business and the business-owner has no right to move you. In Los Angeles, business owners can be fined for even hosing down the sidewalks in front of their buildings, as it is seen as aggression towards the homeless. You can shoot up and smoke down in the middle of the street, even as your limbs rot off. You can be in a gang that runs open-air drug markets and hijacks public bathrooms to “rent” out to drug users and prostitutes. You can steal almost a thousand dollars in product from any given store and go back and do it again the very next day. You can run over 25 law-enforcement recruits during their daily exercise regimen and go home that same day. There are no consequences for those who make criminal choices that hurt other people.

In California, if you follow the rules, all you get is more rules.

They do this to us because the basic instinct of the powerful and influential is to control. It isn’t just the money and the cocktail parties that create this addiction to power, it is the sense of control. Criminals, the severely mentally ill, the drug-addicted…they cannot be controlled. They don’t show up to court or pay their fines. They don’t care if they’re in jail or a tent on the sidewalk. They live outside the rules and restraining them only pulls resources from the departments that are needed to enforce the rules on the only people who will obey them anyway.

Our government is bound and determined to save us from ourselves, but they couldn’t give a rat’s ass about saving us from each other.

Welcome to the Golden State. Plastics are not welcome, but if you’d like to debase yourselves in the middle of our urine-soaked streets, the doors are wide open.