You'll Walk More Than a Mile for a Camel

In our October issue, Charles Paul Freund wrote about the small Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan's ambivalence about the introduction of television, which had prompted proposals to restrict programming. The country's rulers are apparently far less ambivalent about tobacco, which has now been banned.. No, not "banned from bars and restaurants" like they keep trying to do here; banned as in "your Marlboros are now an illicit substance." They're probably just ahead of the curve, alas.

Comments

[fyodor]

As goes Bhutan, so goes the known universe....

[sage]

We really should thank our leaders for protecting us from ourselves. Never mind that we're going to die anyway, let's just make life long AND boring.

[Rhywun]

This was noted on Slate--without irony--under an ongoing series titled something like "What we can learn from...". Chilling.

[Evan Williams]

What's the big deal? No different than outlawing cannibis or ephedra. I wonder if Bhutan also robs its citizens of 21.4% of their earned wealth every year. [sorry, I know it's kinda off-topic, but I just got my W-2's, and it pains me to look at all those various "withholding" columns. Fucking assholes, at least be honest about it and just say "total amount stolen".] But I digress...