Civil Disobedience with Cellphone "Tobacco Products"

"Civil disobedience is the active, professed refusal to obey certain laws, demands, and commands of a government, or of an occupying international power. Civil disobedience is a symbolic or ritualistic violation of the law, rather than a rejection of the system as a whole."

Start complaining...!!!

Trust me, a cellphone is a regulated tobacco product (don't believe me, then see the link below or this or this).

Call up the local school and say you saw it on the "internets" that cellphones control those horrific "e-cigarette things" - you saw pictures, read articles, saw it on Facebook!

Demand they stop allowing cellphones in schools, airports, anywhere else the law says "tobacco products" are not allowed.

I will gladly supply technical details, demonstration videos, pictures, sales documents, and so forth demonstrating that under the current FDA regulations they in fact are "tobacco products."

Given that the iPhone is a tobacco product we can go over at mass.gov (the state web site for Massachusetts) we see why this disobedience will work (underlines mine):

Page #7: RULE 62: Student and Coach Eligibility: Chemical Health/Alcohol/Drugs/Tobacco

62.1 From the earliest fall practice date, to the conclusion of the academic year or final athletic event (whichever is latest),, a student shall not, regardless of the quantity, use, consume, possess, buy/sell, or give away any beverage containing alcohol; any tobacco product; marijuana; steroids; or any controlled substance.

Page 11: 5. Smoke Free Workplace Law language


A school policy may decide to use the state law’s definition for “smoke” or “smoking”. The state law reads “the lighting of a cigar, cigarette, pipe or other tobacco product or possessing a lighted cigar, cigarette, pipe or other tobacco or non-tobacco product designed to be combusted and inhaled.” This definition expands smoking to be any product that was manufactured with the intent of being burned and inhaled, including clove or herb cigarettes. 

Some school districts may want to add “possession of tobacco products” to the list of prohibited activities in their policy. This would allow school personnel to confiscate tobacco products from students. This policy should be limited to students because its goal is to confiscate the product from the student.

So its clear what the state is telling school districts to do - I haven't bothered to search for other states but my guess is that each defines a similar "tobacco policy."

But now since cellphones are "regulated tobacco products" it seems time to ban them from schools in a great act of former smoker civil disobedience...

The great part about this - we citizens can create "tobacco products" out of virtually anything that anyone uses in a place "tobacco products" are not allowed.

So why not do it?