Oren M. Spiegler – 11/2/14

This page was last updated on November 2, 2014.

A tobacco-friendly state; Oren M. Spiegler; Beaver County Times; November 2, 2014.

Mr. Spiegler is such a prolific letter writer the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review gave him a little tribute back in 2003. Google “Oren M. Spiegler” and you’ll get more hits than you know what to do with. Unfortunately, prolific is not a synonym for competent. Mr. Spiegler claims to be a Republican. In my critique of “Breathing more freely,” I cited reasons why I was “beginning to believe Mr. Spiegler is simply another Republican impersonator,” but he sealed the deal with “Greatest foreign policy debacle.” Subsequent letters provided more confirmation. The group of local Republican impersonators also includes Messrs. William A. Alexander, Arthur Brown, Edward J. Hum, Bill Ralston, and George Reese, all claiming to be disgruntled Republicans.

You can find links to previous critiques of Spiegler letters I critiqued here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Below is a detailed critique of the subject letter.

“It will be interesting to learn how, if at all, Pennsylvania responds to the trend of governmental bodies increasing the minimum age to purchase tobacco products from 18 to 21.”

[RWC] This is my standard disclosure regarding the tobacco topic. I’ve never been a user of tobacco in any form. I prefer not to be in places where people are smoking – the smoke irritates my eyes and throat – and I hate the smell of smoke on my clothes. I don’t permit persons to smoke in my car or home. Four of the above listed critiques addressed previous Spiegler anti-smoking letters.

“As evidenced by the difficulty in passing even a watered down version of the Clean Air Act more than five years ago and the bill being riddled with exemptions for casinos and bars to endanger their employees, it is clear that ours is a tobacco-friendly state.”

[RWC] Government should be neither friendly nor unfriendly to tobacco and I don’t believe our government should take away personal and property rights to further the anti-tobacco crusade.

“We know that almost all individuals who become addicted to nicotine begin smoking when they are young, before they are able to make an informed decision about whether to pursue this expensive and lethal drug addiction. The fight against passing this addiction from generation to generation would be aided by increasing the age at which one may purchase the product.”

[RWC] If 18-year-olds are too young to be “able to make an informed decision about whether to pursue this expensive and lethal drug addiction,” shouldn’t we rethink allowing 18-year-olds to vote and join the military? By the time a person is 18, for more than a decade he’s been bombarded with sound information from myriad sources explaining why tobacco use is dangerous and why to avoid its use. The “too young to make an informed decision” argument can be made about many of the potentially life-altering decisions we must make. Perhaps we should also rethink the minimum driving age. I’d be willing to bet more people are injured or killed by 20-year-old and younger drivers “[un]able to make an informed [driving] decision” than by 18 – 20-year-olds who choose to use tobacco products. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, it’s not until sometime after the 24-years-old group when the accident rate drops to match the proportion of drivers in a given group.

“Are members of the General Assembly on the side of public health and reducing what we spend for the care of gravely ill smokers or will it side with special interest Big Tobacco? Decades as a student of state government causes [sic] me to fear the answer.”

[RWC] As he did in one of his anti-smoking letters, Mr. Spiegler refers to “special interests.” In my critique of that letter I wrote, “Mr. Spiegler provides an example of a point I like to make. That is, a lobbying group is only a ‘special interest’ if you oppose the group’s position. Here Mr. Spiegler writes about ‘the vast might of special interests,’ yet apparently doesn’t consider Smokefree Pennsylvania and Tobacco-Free Allegheny (referred to below) to be ‘special interests.’”