Callahan makes a persuasive case: 67 percent of Americans are overweight, he writes. “Obesity is a leading cause of diabetes, heart disease, and kidney failure. There are some prima facie reasons for thinking about stigmatization as one more arrow in the quiver of possible solutions.
“It can hardly be said that obesity is beyond individual control,’’ he continues. “So, why not stigmatize [the obese], bringing social pressure to bear?’’
What could be more logical? No category of US citizens, with the possible exception of prisoners, has been subjected to more government-sponsored economic and social harassment than cigarette smokers. Last month every newspaper and TV station in the country gleefully reported the latest taxpayer-funded attack on smokers: graphic new cigarette warning labels, depicting coffin-nail addicts as losers with rotten teeth and, of course, dead.
Taxed up the wazoo, forced to pay hundreds of extra dollars for health insurance, tossed out in the rain and snow to sneak a few puffs of the dreaded cancer sticks - smokers are the deadbeat dads of the public health landscape. Here in Boston, there is a move afoot to ban smokers from public housing. In New York, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is ticketing cigarette smokers in public parks.
“The effort of smokers to invoke their civil rights gained no traction,’’ Callahan writes, “and the public health community made no moves to come to their aid.’’
I was looking forward to chatting with Callahan, because he sounded like a public health writer unfettered by modish jargon and the strictures of political correctness. He agreed to speak with me by phone from his vacation aerie on Little Cranberry Island, Maine. Practically the first words out of his mouth were: “I am switching sides. I don’t want to lead a crusade for stigmatizing men and women who have trouble controlling their weight. It would be enormously hurtful for a lot of people.’’
