Advantageous comparison uses absurd comparators to justify policy

Evidence

One advocate compares e-cigarettes with health food: “You wouldn’t put a tax on Weight Watchers health food” (Richtel, 2014d). Another uses water as a justifying comparator:

“We don’t ban water because it looks like vodka” (Hartocollis, 2013).

— Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1722

Categorization

• CANDY: The ‘we don’t ban water because it looks like vodka’ line is a clean, tweetable example of misleading analogy in advocacy.
• DEFINE: Concrete illustration of Bandura’s ‘advantageous comparison’ mechanism — comparing to an obviously benign thing to make the disputed thing seem innocent.