First off, I am neither conservative nor liberal. I would actually be impossible for me to define my politics simply.
I do, however, always react to derision from both sides of the spectrum, so I will reply
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liberals could care less what you eat, but they make sure that the meat packers follow basic rules for handling meat. Republicans would just as soon let them poison you to 'stay off the back of business'.
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In 1994 Clinton proposed legislation that would place a tax on foods considered "unhealthy", much like a sin tax on alcohol and tobacco. The proposal was such widely derided, it was quickly withdrawn.
We currently are witnessing a suit, financially supported by a number of organizations typically associated as "liberal", regarding the financial culpability of restaurants for offering foods with a high fat content.
I would say this is a trite more than regulation of the meat packing industry.
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they could also give a shit if you want to kill yourself doing 120 mph in your car, but they won't let you do it on the highway so you can endanger everyone else.
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Sorry, I lived in Ny state during Coumo's regime there and actually challenged the maintenance of the 55 mph speed limit there when the rest of the country was at 65 mph. Having received three tickets in three weeks for the tremendous crime of going 62, 59 and 65 in a 55, I challenged the legitimacy of the law (hell, I was going to lose my license which was critical at the time). Suffice it to say that discovery revealed one of the primary motivations for retaining the 55 mph speed limit was fee generation (ergo, taxation). I furtermore don't think that doing a 60 in a 55 rates as a major social transgression on my part.
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they don't particularly care if you smoke, but don't like the hypocrisy of allowing some drugs and not others that are less harmful but more demonized.
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Then please explain the concept of sin taxes. There are quite a few activities that are actually more dangerous to your health than smoking but are not taxed at the same level - or at all. Why? I think it is because smoking is unfashionable right now while some other activities are not.
All I am saying is that both groups wish to regulate your behavior, they just have different priorties. Whether you agree with one set of priorities or not, is not the issue. To deny, however, that one of the groups does not attempt to legislate their values using hysterical examples is naive.
By the way, my comment about teatotalers was a metaphor to point out the irony of using urelated statistical data to reach a conclusion...it wasn't really a serious comment. Maybe the rediculous nature of the comment did not touch your humour nerve.
As far as the generalization that conservatives want to tell you what to read and think, etc. Yeah, social conservatives do, but most conservatives are not social conservatives, just as all liberals are not eco-terrorists or socialists.