So now San Francisco is banning e-cigarettes, because a City Council
member discovered there are still people making personal decisions about
what to do with their lives. They’ve been trying to eliminate these
people for three decades now, but some individuals just refuse to learn.
It’s been a year or so since I wrote about San Francisco’s ban on the sale of fur
in a move that does nothing for animals but destroys businesses that
have been established there since the 19th century. Unfortunately I
can’t really devote 52 columns a year to cataloguing products banned by
San Francisco. In the past they’ve outlawed plastic bags, clove
cigarettes, Coke machines, bottled-water machines, people playing
stickball in the street, people playing chess in the street, pet stores,
goldfish, masked balls, and the practice of letting your dog stick his
head halfway out the window while you’re driving. Long ago they banned
toys being given away with Happy Meals at McDonald’s. There are several states
that have been under sanction by San Francisco at various times, with
city employees forbidden from traveling on official business to Arizona,
Kansas, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky,
South Dakota, or my home state of Texas. (Which is fine with me—I don’t
really want any bowdlerizing Californians accidentally attending a rodeo
and deciding to file animal-cruelty charges at the United Nations.)
It’s illegal to ride a Segway in San Francisco, to package food with
Styrofoam, to declaw a cat, or to serve chocolate milk in schools. No
one in government is allowed to make any contract with any company that
uses tropical hardwood—“Get the rugs out! The floor inspectors are coming over!”—and
no school is allowed to offer Junior ROTC because young people who want
to follow their families into military service are probably deranged.
Don’t try to walk more than eight dogs at a time—even if they’re toy
poodles and Chihuahuas—and don’t give your 5-year-old a slingshot for
his birthday, because that’s an illegal weapon.
If you asked the high sheriffs of the city exactly what’s going on here, they would give you some version of San Francisco knows better.