The Grind:
It’s well known that when old people combine resistance training with fish oil, they build muscle and get stronger. That’s all well and good, but you could probably feed old people some pickles for a few weeks and, as long as they combined it with weight training, they’d experience some positive effects on body comp, health, or performance.
Many old folks just don’t eat that well, supplement so well, or exercise so well, so any positive, consistent change in their diet (polyphenols from pickles?) – combined with resistance training – could easily affect several health parameters.
The Details:
“An outright ban being considered… is all new territory,” an anonymous source told the Post. “And I’ve never seen anything like this where [the state] uses this kind of focus grouping, alliance building, momentum building.”
If the Hochul administration does move forward with such a plan, it would be an enormous mistake.
For one, it’s a simple matter of freedom. Smoking cigarettes is bad for you, and people really shouldn’t do it if they care about their long-term health. But we live in a free country, and freedom for adults necessarily means the freedom to make bad decisions about their own lives.
Secondly, banning the legal sale of tobacco products in New York wouldn’t erase the massive demand for these products. It would simply move the entire market underground, leading to a huge spike in black market activity. That means a big risk of product contamination, huge amounts of lost tax revenue, and a rise in conflict between the police and everyday New Yorkers.
Don’t forget that the now infamous case of Eric Garner, who was killed by NYPD officers, all happened over him selling cigarettes under the table. Tragedies like this would become even more common if the entire tobacco industry was pushed into the black market in New York. Read more…