The Nanny-State Nazis who make up the U.S. government are considering either severely limiting or having an outright ban on peanuts being served on commercial flights. Because a small minority of people have allergies to peanuts, the rest of us must be deprived by the Nanny-State Nazis. (I’m still trying to figure out how civilization survived at all before we had this wonderful institution of “democratic government” that we are spreading like horse manure around the world.) Of course, the peanut industry is not taking this lying down.

Do you remember the good old days of “Smoking” and “No Smoking” sections on airplanes? I guess the first step before an outright ban will be “Nuts” or “No Nuts.” As far as I’m concerned, you have to be nuts to even fly commercial at all nowadays if you have any other option to get you where you want to go.

UPDATE: Wayne Shack writes:

Yet from my occasional flying adventures I know for fact that if someone is allergic to peanuts all they have to do is inform one of the flight attendants and they WON’T SERVE PEANUTS for that specific flight. . .

I can’t remember what the date was exactly, but one night I was flying across the country. A young couple with a newly born baby, couldn’t have been more than a year old, was on the flight as well. The couple approached one of the attendants prior to boarding and I overheard them talking about the (potentially lethal) allergies of their child to peanuts. Apparently peanut dust even had the possibility of setting off the allergic reaction. The attendant agreed to ensure that NO peanuts would be served during that entire flight.

How that family got their child safely across the United States without it dying from peanut allergies is beyond me. . .

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Brad Morris writes:

Thank you for your Blog post on LRC.  As a parent of a kid who suffers from a peanut allergy, I would like to say that I am highly appalled that the U.S. Government would even consider such a ban.  My family flies often enough for us to know that we can always inform a travel agent or the airline that our son suffers from a peanut allergy, and they in turn (voluntarily) will attempt to make sure that the flight is peanut free.  And, even if they can not, we are accommodating enough — and responsible enough as free thinking individuals — to always make sure that we travel with antihistamine AND an Epinephrine auto-injector for our son.  That is the best that anyone can do when caring from someone with a peanut allergy.

To even think that the U.S. government would start dictating that people must abstain from something as wholesome as a peanut because someone else may be allergic is absolutely preposterous and turns logic on its head.  However, if a company freely and voluntarily offers to remove peanuts from their flight — out of concern for a passengers safety — on their own accord, then that is their right to.  I never demand it, nor do I reschedule a flight because they will not.  In the same vein, I would not reschedule a flight because an airline did not serve peanuts.

What’s next?  Will the Department of Homeland In-Security start patting people down for peanuts and tazing them to death if they try to sneak some M&Ms on board a flight?

As a side note, I might add ironically that it was an IP dispute that stopped a promising treatment for peanut allergy sufferers (called TNX-901) from coming to market in 2005.  You can read about the study reported in the New England Journal of Medicine here.  You can also read a little more background on why it was prevented from coming to market here.