I don’t get it. Is our country moving backward along the space-time continuum? Last Friday, a U.S. district judge ruled that the FDA may regulate tobacco, but not tobacco advertising. However, on Monday, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear arguments regarding the constitutionality of a Baltimore ban on billboards advertising tobacco — thus upholding the ban.

What’s going on?

Don’t get me wrong. I am not asserting that the tobacco powers-that-be are above reproach, but when the government starts enforcing content-specific restrictions on what ought to be free speech, I start getting scared. The higher court’s decision concerning the ban on tobacco billboard ads — that the ban is constitutional — contradicts everything for which the First Amendment stands.

The court historically has shown more leniency toward restrictions on commercial speech than political or other types of speech; it concedes that commercial speech serves the lower, sole purpose of promoting economic activity. But the higher court did establish a four-part test to be used in determining the constitutionality of regulations on commercial speech with its decision in Central Hudson Gas & Electric Corp. v. Public Service Commission.

Under the four-part test, a court must first ascertain whether the speech at hand is, in fact, commercial speech eligible for constitutional consideration, which means the speech accurately promotes a legal product or service. After establishing the legitimacy of the commercial speech, the court then considers the government’s restriction on the speech. A restriction is constitutional if the government can prove an overriding public interest that would be served if and only if the speech is restricted. Furthermore, the government must provide evidence that the restriction is narrowly tailored, enough to serve the interest but no broader than necessary.

Baltimore’s ban on billboards advertising tobacco does not meet the latter three of these requirements. It is not constitutional. More evidence for the ban’s unconstitutionality lies in a decision made by the Supreme Court regarding alcohol advertising. According to The Law of Public Communication by Middleton, Chamberlin and Bunker: “In a case of alcohol advertisements, eight justices of the Supreme Court agreed that Rhode Island’s total ban on truthful price advertising for alcohol did not fit properly with the state’s goal of reducing drinking. Rhode Island had several alternatives to a ban on price advertising, the court said.

The state could discourage drinking by raising the prices of alcoholic beverages, raising taxes on alcohol, putting limits on purchases of alcohol as the government limits the purchase of prescription drugs, and conducting education campaigns to discourage drinking” (p. 312).

Daily Tribune Editor Michael Gartner is fond of saying, “If you want to ban smoking, ban smoking. But don’t ban speech on smoking.” He applies the same logic to all societal issues. Barbara Mack, associate professor of journalism and mass communication, just made the same argument to me in her office. She pointed out that we as a society consistently tiptoe around problems, on the fringes of what we consider a solution, without ever directly addressing the problem. For instance, why the dichotomy between alcohol and tobacco, as long as they are being treated differently under the Constitution? The FDA has ruled that tobacco is a drug; but if tobacco is a drug, why is it being treated differently than cocaine or, closer to home, marijuana? The lines are fuzzy and deserve definition.

The Supreme Court’s recent decision and other legal goings-on among tobacco giants indicate another problematic trend in our society: unwillingness to take responsibility. To ban tobacco billboards near schools out of fear that our children might see them is to demean the job of parents. To sue the tobacco industry for medical problems related to smoking is to deny personal responsibility for our choices. If tobacco is so addictive, why isn’t addiction to nicotine treated as a disease, like alcoholism? Why do we cluck with sympathy at alcoholics while looking down from our moral high ground upon those who smoke?

To allow government officials to benefit from illegal campaign funding is to offer them refuge from responsibility for their actions in office. To not vote to ratify the new GSB Constitution is to not take responsibility for how our tuition is spent. To cheat on an exam is to refuse responsibility for not having prepared. To make an insensitive remark in a computer lab then try to veil it under the pretext of private conversation is to purge responsibility for what we say.

Get my point? We all must take responsibility.

We must take responsibility for our personal lives, and we must take the responsibility to address head-on the issues that face us as a society.

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Tracy Lucht is a senior in journalism and mass communication from West Des Moines.