One of the reasons I moved South.
One of about a dozen of my things that goes boom.
Posted on 04/06/2007 8:36:42 PM PDT by paratrooper82
The Bay Area is considered one of the most diverse, tolerant places on the planet. Its reputation as a stalwart defender of minority rights is unparalleled. "San Francisco values" is how Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly likes to describe our uniqueness.
The region's policy decisions on hot-button topics usually strike a careful balance between protecting private rights and public health. But there's one group that we apparently see as nothing but a bunch of social pariahs: smokers.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.org ...
The region's policy decisions on hot-button topics usually strike a careful balance between protecting private rights and public health. But there's one group that we apparently see as nothing but a bunch of social pariahs: smokers.
Two years ago, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors passed what was, at the time, one of the most comprehensive outdoor smoking bans in the state, making it illegal to smoke in city-owned parks and squares.
Smoking has long been banned at outdoor restaurants and theaters in Berkeley, and similar outdoor smoking restrictions have recently been implemented in a half-dozen other Bay Area cities as well as in unincorporated Alameda, Contra Costa and Marin counties. An ordinance enacted last year in Dublin declared secondhand smoke a public nuisance and made it easier for residents there to sue each other over secondhand smoke.
In Belmont, it is already illegal to smoke in hallways and other common areas in apartment buildings and similar multi-unit housing complexes. But next month the Belmont City Council is expected to go even further by approving the nation's most restrictive anti-smoking policy. It will soon be illegal to smoke anywhere in Belmont except in your detached, single-family home.
You won't be able smoke outside. You won't be able to smoke in your car or in your apartment. If you can come up with the $900,000 median price, you can buy a stand-alone house and smoke there – at least for now. This final refuge for smokers is surely the next target of the prohibitionist regulators.
In Belmont whatever you want to do in the privacy of your own apartment bedroom is ok - just as long as you don't smoke when you do it. This creeping Bay Area nanny state should worry us all, not just smokers.
Smoking causes cancer. Smokers assume the risks. But, proponents of the nanny state claim we have to stop them because smokers impose great costs on society through increased health care costs and other expenses. Reason magazine's Jacob Sullum, author of For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade shows otherwise: smokers don't fleece us by bleeding Medicaid and Social Security because they die sooner than nonsmokers.
Fine, but we still have to ban smoking because secondhand smoke will kill innocent bystanders, according to ban proponents. But here the science is extremely murky.
Sullum writes, "The studies that link secondhand smoke to these illnesses [cancer, heart attacks] involve intense, long-term exposure, typically among people who have lived with smokers for decades. Even in these studies, it's difficult to demonstrate an effect, precisely because the doses of toxins and carcinogens bystanders passively absorb are much smaller than the doses absorbed by smokers."
In toxicology, the dose makes the poison. How much smoke are you getting sitting a quarter-mile away from a smoker in the same Belmont apartment complex? You'll get struck by lightning before that level of smoke kills you.
We've gone from banning smoking in restaurants and bars to banning smoking everywhere.
What's next? The food police will ban trans fat and then slink on to popular fast foods. Proposed restrictions on the use of cell phones and iPods are in the news nationally. The list goes on and on. You may not smoke, but sooner or later the nanny police will surely target something you do care about.
Does the Bay Area really want government to dictate what we can do in our own homes and apartments? You may think smoking is disgusting, but unless you think the same of personal freedom, we should all stand up against the prohibitionists on this one.
Skaidra Smith-Heisters lives in Santa Rosa and is a policy analyst at Reason Foundation. An archive of her work is here. Reason's California research and commentary is here.
We have been this route before national Prohibition. Outlawing smoking will just turn smokers into outlaws. While it may not be socially acceptable, tobacco remains a legal product and if I want to enjoy a cigar in my own home or on my patio the state has no reason to come after me.
That isn't true at all if you are talking about politically conservative pro-military straight people.
But will we ever see that said about homosexuality and the spread of STDs, HIV, and AIDS? I won't hold my breath. It's just my guess but I'd bet certain lifestyle choices have a bigger cost than those associated with smoking.
The Activism sidebar is reserved for Activism, protests, news and business of [the] Free Republic Chapters.
Not this.
Thanks,
AM
Only of you are one of the “approved” groups. Try exercising your right to keep and bear arms there.
It’s reputation as a liberal hellhole is well deserved.
Absolutely!
How about the 60-80% of adults who are fat and have high rates of diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, osteoporosis, strokes, and some types of cancers?
"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." - Manuel II Palelologus
Have no fear they’re next. I can see government mandated menu’s in the not to distant future.
Did he have to use the D word in the first sentence? I just tune out after that.
Twenty-five per cent of the population smokes. I wonder what Rosa Parks would say if smokers tried to even get on a bus, much less sit in the back.
One of the reasons I moved South.
One of about a dozen of my things that goes boom.
OKAY
NOT OKAY
OKAY
NOT OKAY
ODDLY, THIS IS OKAY. (:^0)
Smoking bans don’t just effect the rights of smokers; it effects EVERYONE’S rights! When we start to unfairly tax one segment of the population and then begin to censor them, it is only a matter of time before these types of measures are used to curtail other liberties.
You can discuss topics like smoking bans and others at my site, http://www.smokinglobby.com/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.