Smoking bans cloud free market's ability to thrive

The harmful effects of cigarettes on smokers have been well documented since the 1950s.

Health officials, doctors and government agencies have long cautioned that cigarettes cause numerous cancers, emphysema, chronic bronchitis and obstructive pulmonary disorders, among other ailments. Despite warning labels and public campaigns, many smokers continue to accept the health risks and simply light up.

Nevertheless, the persistent efforts of health advocates have been increasingly persuasive. Smoking rates in the U.S. have consistently fallen since the early 1960s.¹ Smoking rates per capita have fallen to 22.5 percent² and show no signs of recovering.

Adult per capita cigarette yearly consumption and major smoking and health events, United States, 1900–1999

From: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Sources: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Tobacco use—United States, 1900–1999. Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 1999;48(43):986; Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, Marketing and Trade Economics Division, Specialty Crops Branch, unpublished data; Department of Agriculture. Agricultural Outlook. Washington (DC): Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service, 2001. USDA Publication No. ERS-AO-278.

A report by the Centers for Disease Control in 1975 called attention to the danger of secondhand smoke – a collection of supposedly toxic chemicals that apparently lurks in the air attacking innocent victims long after smokers have exhaled. This notion has spread like a virus courtesy of health officials looking for evidence to indicate that smoking can harm not only smokers, but also others around them.

The science of the effects of secondhand smoke is not as sharply defined as the health risk assumed by smokers themselves. However, it is obvious that secondhand smoke does have certain negative consequences.

While the range and degree of these repercussions may be debatable, the policy reactions to the professed dangers of secondhand smoke are becoming legendary. The dangers ascribed to secondhand smoke are rapidly transforming a previously private choice into a public-health decision open to government regulation.

While government health officials previously focused their efforts on informing and educating smokers on the dangerous effects that smoking may have on their own health, the debate has now shifted. Nonsmokers are now portrayed as helpless victims of their neighbors’ bad habits. As a result, government officials have leapt into action to protect the rights of one group – often at the expense of the liberties of another.

Cities, states and even some countries have responded by instituting smoking bans of varying degrees in numerous public places. Some laws expressly prohibit smoking in any business, workplace or public gathering. Others specify exemptions for bars, bingo halls, smoke shops, large restaurants and other locales when their owners show up at council meetings and complain.

What all bans have in common is the emerging practice of government workers who don’t own businesses dictating how owners should conduct their operations. Publicly-employed health officials are effectively persuading an increasing number of lawmakers that business owners are acting irresponsibly by simply responding to the desire of their customers who want to smoke.

Groups involved in lobbying policymakers to enact smoking bans vary widely, but certain patterns are emerging.

Health officials on a government payroll at some level frequently lead the effort to convince politicians to enact smoking bans in privately owned establishments. Local and state health departments acknowledge no barriers in subverting their historical role of informing and educating to a new one that mandates legislative action and harsh enforcement.

Business owners almost always oppose government-imposed smoking bans since their primary focus rests upon what is best for their customers. Such heavy-handed policies are invoked in spite of the fact that consumers in a market economy have the right to vote with their feet. More and more, businesses are voluntarily bowing to the will of their customers by enacting their own smoking bans.

Any business subject to a market economy must always react to the tastes, preferences and trends of its customer base. Business owners that fail to adapt their policies to the changing tastes of customers often end up broke. Customers stop buying, employees are laid off and buildings are sold to more adaptable firms willing to listen to the market.

More and more business owners are deciding to prohibit smoking in some form, without government intrusion. This movement also reflects what is happening in the marketplace – more Americans give up smoking every day, a trend likely to continue.

The market is clearly deciding that smoking is a negative habit, and its practitioners will eventually be relegated to a small niche of the population. Just as there are very few blacksmiths and buggy-whip makers, there will soon be few establishments catering to smokers.

However, this market process is not happening fast enough to suit some health officials, lobbying groups and other public-health advocates. Neither is the continued existence of a few businesses that still cater to this diminishing audience. What bureaucrats demand today will naturally evolve in the coming years.

While anti-market, pro-smoking ban forces occasionally meet with some success, local policymakers who can see though their chicanery rebuke their campaigns. But unlike other advocacy groups who gracefully accept defeat, smoking-ban activists rarely accept the decisions of policymakers that don’t go their way.

When a proposal for a smoking ban is rejected, proponents will either redouble their efforts or endeavor to elect different policymakers who are more agreeable to their position. When a relatively weak ban is enacted, these advocates use the new policy as a wedge to enact ones that are even more coercive. If business owners don’t maintain their vigil, exemptions are eliminated and establishments that have dodged regulation in the past are forced to endure under the umbrella of a smoking policy established and enforced by government.

Why are advocates of smoking bans so fervent while other policy groups are more likely to accept the decisions of local policymakers? It has to do with who they are and how they are funded.

Supporters of greater government regulation and enforcement often work in government themselves. They are frequently on the payroll of state health boards, local health departments and advisory committees. Often subsidized by taxpayer funding, they have no customers to please, no donors to satisfy and little fear of losing their livelihoods.

Even when there are donors to satisfy, many policy advocacy groups can actually benefit from losing a smoking-ban battle. They can show their donors and supporters how close they came and how – with just a little more help next time – they can succeed in limiting the rights of business owners and customers in the future.

The actual effects of smoking bans are even more inconclusive than the science regarding secondhand smoke. Pro-ban advocates claim no negative effect on business and often go as far as claiming an economic benefit.

These allegations are spurious to say the least. Such economic studies purporting to show no effect of an enacted smoking ban have multiple and often fatal flaws in their research. For one thing, smoking bans rarely appear the same in different localities. As no two communities are exactly alike, policymakers must carefully evaluate the economic comparisons of smoking bans between them.

Before-and-after comparisons have attempted to show that business activity does not decline in establishments that prohibit smoking following the enactment of a smoking ban. However, very few of the studies attempting to make such comparisons follow the standard rigor and precision required for this type of research. Usually, the time frames are too short to be measured, few external variables are taken into consideration or economic modeling is not utilized or is simply wrong.

For example, a study by University of Kentucky nursing professor Ellen Hahn attempted to demonstrate an absence of negative effects on business activity after Lexington’s smoking ban took effect in 2004. While the report is widely quoted in the media, it has been soundly discredited by researchers across the state. Dr. Paul Coomes, a leading University of Louisville economist, said the Hahn report “is less an econometric study than a short running narrative surrounding a few charts.”

Hahn’s paper contains no rigorous economic model, uses a very short time span and fails to account for many variables such as longer operating hours for bars. After warning of the dangers of making before-and-after comparisons, Hahn proceeds to do just that, claiming the results are instead conclusive. Thus, her conclusions are anything but incontrovertible.

Conversely, a study by University of Louisville economist Richard Thalheimer does contain a rigorous economic model while also accounting for many variables in play. Thalheimer’s study finds a 9 percent to 13 percent drop in demand for alcohol in bars and restaurants after Lexington’s smoking ban was enacted.

Thalheimer was unable to release specific details about the information he reviewed because it contains propriety sales data. Also, he was unable to account for 100 percent of alcohol sales. However, his study does contain analysis on a majority of alcohol sales in Lexington.

So while Thalheimer’s report showing a significant drop in demand is not perfect, it’s the most rigorous and competent analysis of Lexington’s smoking ban. While his study may have a crack in the windshield, Hahn’s paper is missing the entire front half of the car.

What none of these studies can take into account is the natural adaptability and flexibility of business owners and entrepreneurs. In a market economy, business owners naturally assume risks. Deciding what products to offer, who to hire and how to advertise are risky ventures to entrepreneurs. When faced with excessively burdensome regulations, it is foolish to think they will simply accept it, roll over and do as they are told.

In hundreds of U.S. cities, we have seen restaurants and bars take similar steps to circumvent smoking bans.

For example, some declare themselves “public clubs,” which often are exempt from smoking bans and charge a “membership fee” that is really nothing more than a “cover charge.” They build large decks and patios that provide open-air areas to cater to customers who still wish to smoke. Some businesses simply flaunt the law openly, paying fines or hoping no enforcer comes snooping around to check on them.

These measures are the result of enforcing policies the market has already rejected. As Americans learned during the ill-fated prohibition movement of the early 1900s, trying to regulate and enforce the desires and demands of the market is like trying to hold back the wind. Markets and the entrepreneurs who power them are flexible, adaptable and reactive. The wind always finds a way around you.

What are the best options for businesses, policymakers and advocates who oppose oppressive regulation and government intervention in the marketplace? Identify win-win solutions that inform and educate employees and consumers while still allowing business owners the flexibility to operate as they see fit. Also, public health officials need to return to the traditional role in which they have excelled – providing the best information to the public regardless of influence and advocacy.

Maybe the best way to allow consumers to migrate toward an equilibrium that balances smoking and nonsmoking establishments is to allow them to make the best, most educated choices. This can be done by finding alternatives to outright smoking bans that fully inform consumers, employees and prospective employees of a business’s policy.

One such policy is Great Britain’s “Public Places Charter,” which requires the posting of clear and obvious signage that informs employees and consumers about an establishment’s smoking status. This transparent system identifies the establishments that prohibit smoking, those that offer no protection to nonsmokers and those that have separate areas or ventilation systems. This type of informative and educating policy returns public-health officials to the role that has made them effective at reducing smoking rates in the U.S. for 30 years.

While public health officials may monitor restaurants’ kitchens for safety, their main goal is to help owners comply with safety guidelines. The difference between this type of informative regulation and a prohibitive smoking ban is clear. Customers do not have the pertinent information on the sanitary conditions of kitchens to make informed choices about where to eat. But anyone can tell if there is a smoker at the next table and make their own decision. No external intervention is necessary.

When public-health officials re-focus on the effective role of informing and educating as opposed to legislating and regulating, the market will again be allowed to operate freely. Trends in America clearly point away from smoking and toward cleaner and safer businesses. Unfortunately, as we learned in the era of prohibition, there is no way to legislate market forces completely out of existence and attempts to do so often result in numerous unintended consequences.

While the intentions of smoking-ban advocates are certainly noble, their methods and procedures are simply misinformed and fall prey to the myth that regulations can remedy society’s ills and fix a market that knows it is not broken.

– Aaron Morris is the fiscal policy analyst for the Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions, Kentucky’s free-market think tank.

Categories: Economics, Basic; Government, General; Health Care; Property Rights; Regulation

The Bluegrass Institute is an independent research and educational institution offering free-market solutions to Kentucky's most pressing problems.

Permission to reprint Perspective commentaries, in whole or in part, is hereby granted, provided the author and his affiliations are cited. Authors are available for interviews by contacting the Institute.

I personally could care LESS if someone smokes.

I DO NOT want to smell it or breathe it in, nor do I want
ONE DOLLAR of tax money to pay for their health care. You smoke, you get cancer, you die. Oh well. The gov't has no business telling ADULTS how to live anyway.

There's two key points that prove that the whole "protect the workers" smoking ban is a fraud.

1) Most of these busybody laws fine not the smokers, but the bars themselves. The employees being "protected" are stuck enforcing said protection. There's already one documented death from this.

2) The bans are portrayed as "occupational safety" rules but ignore the concept of Permissable Exposure Limit (PEL), the cornerstone of all workplace chemical exposure regulations.

One of the few non-smoking bar employees with occupational safety management experience,

-Eric

Smoking bans do not bother me personally because I do not smoke or want to smell someone elses smoke. The reason to oppose these bans is what will they ban next. What legal act will they tell a private business they cannot allow. They will continue come up with something new and eventually get us all.

"What legal act will they (next) tell a private business they cannot allow? They will continue come up with something new and eventually get us all."

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn’t speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

~ Author Unknown

There are several versions of this well-known statement, and is attributed to the German anti-Nazi activist, Pastor Martin Niemöller.

The following is said, by someone who heard him speak at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decautur GA in 1959 (or 1960), to be what he actually said:

In Germany they first came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me —
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

On 2005-07-11 a reader sent this message:

Please allow me to say that the Niemöller quote you have is not correct. The Nazi party did not come for the Jews until last.

Correctly the order is Communist, Socialist,Trade Unionist,then Jews, then Pastor Niemoller.
Thank you.

I couldn't agree with you more.

If you DON'T smoke and get cancer and die I don't want any of my tax dollars paying for your health car either.

In fact,I don't want to pay for anyone's heallth care except my own and my family's.

So there!!!!

Here we go again. I'm really getting sick of this straw man argument. It's brought up on EVERY smoking thread, and been hashed out before. I'm saying it again...the very SAME people who have made smokers more hated than Osama Bin Laden are the ones who want to legalize ALL OTHER drugs.

The science of the effects of secondhand smoke is not as sharply defined as the health risk assumed by smokers themselves. However, it is obvious that secondhand smoke does have certain negative consequences.

While the range and degree of these repercussions may be debatable, the policy reactions to the professed dangers of secondhand smoke are becoming legendary. The dangers ascribed to secondhand smoke are rapidly transforming a previously private choice into a public-health decision open to government regulation.

I only had to read to here before I knew that this writer was biased toward the anti's point of view.
They may say they want the free market to be left alone to work the way it's supposed to, this alone points to their bias. They don't like smoking.

And once again, While the intentions of smoking-ban advocates are certainly noble, their methods and procedures are simply misinformed and fall prey to the myth that regulations can remedy society’s ills and fix a market that knows it is not broken.
The writer's bias shows through. Noble? To quote someone, "It is to laugh".

This person may have the right ideas about letting the free market work but their bias shows through just like a black slip under a sheer white dress.

Most establishments in the US had this policy (remember, "Smoking or non-smoking?")

However, this wasn't good enough for the Gnatzi's.

Too much is never enough for your dyed-in-the-wool control freak.

First they came for no smoker, never have never will.

In the original German version they actually CAME AND DISAPPEARED THE PEOPLE

The nico addicts just love hyperbole. They are not thinking straight, anymore than crack addicts or tweakers (meth users) are. They are clueless how the addiction has affected their thinking. Their brains crave a substance many of the addicts are powerless to resist. If they would only convert to non-chewable snuff for the most part their lives would be spared. I know many that never made it to 40. Smoking is insanity and all smokeable products should rightly be banned by ay responsible government. Responsible governments do not allow poison to be sold to be ingested.

It ain't a civil rights issue. Never was, never will be.

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.

Categories: Economics, Basic; Government, General; Health Care; Property Rights; Regulation