The Hazards of a Smoke-Free Environment

CNSNews.com ^ | May 26, 2003 | Robert W. Tracinski

[Tailgunner Joe]

The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation - from New York City to San Antonio - has nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed threat of "second-hand" smoke.

Indeed, the bans themselves are symptoms of a far more grievous threat; a cancer that has been spreading for decades and has now metastasized throughout the body politic, spreading even to the tiniest organs of local government. This cancer is the only real hazard involved - the cancer of unlimited government power.

The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or a phantom menace, as a study published recently in the British Medical Journal indicates. The issue is: if it were harmful, what would be the proper reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating people about the potential danger and allowing them to make their own decisions, or should they seize the power of government and force people to make the "right" decision?

Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than attempting to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the tobacco bans are the unwanted intrusion.

Loudly billed as measures that only affect "public places," they have actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops, and offices - places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose customers are free to go elsewhere if they don't like the smoke. Some local bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is obviously negligible, such as outdoor public parks.

The decision to smoke, or to avoid "second-hand" smoke, is a question to be answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married or divorced, and so on.

All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the neighbors. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must be free, because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbors, and only his own judgment can guide him through it.

Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Cigarette smokers are a numerical minority, practicing a habit considered annoying and unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the power of government and used it to dictate their behavior.

That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your favorite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the systematic and unlimited intrusion of government into our lives.

The tobacco bans are just part of one prong of this assault. Traditionally, the political Right has attempted to override the individual's judgment on spiritual matters: outlawing certain sexual practices, trying to ban sex and violence in entertainment, discouraging divorce.

While the political Left is nominally opposed to this trend - denouncing attempts to "legislate morality" and crusading for the toleration of "alternative lifestyles," - they seek to override the individual's judgment on material matters: imposing controls on business and profit-making, regulating advertising and campaign finance, and now legislating healthy behavior.

But the difference is only one of emphasis; the underlying premise is still anti-freedom and anti-individual-judgment. The tobacco bans bulldoze all the barriers to intrusive regulation, establishing the precedent that the rights of the individual can be violated whenever the local city council decides that the "public good" demands it.

Ayn Rand described the effect of this two-pronged assault on liberty: "The conservatives see man as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories--with an electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington.

The liberals see man as a soul free-wheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe but wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of bread," or, today, when he crosses the street to buy a cigarette.

It doesn't take a new statistical study to show that such an attack on freedom is inimical to human life. No crusade to purge our air of any whiff of tobacco smoke can take precedence over a much more important human requirement: the need for the unbreached protection of individual rights.

[Search4Truth]

Spot on!

[swarthyguy]

I see no difference between right and left on this issue.

Anal Control Freaks of both the left and right find joy and sustenance in these bans.

[netmilsmom]

ping!
How many of your freedoms do you want to give up?

[aardvark1]

Cigarette smokers are a numerical minority, practicing a habit considered annoying and unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the power of government and used it to dictate their behavior.

Although I agree with the author's main point, the kind of logic displayed in the above statement won't help him. My guess is that Tracinski would complain that the minority has simply "commandeered the power of the government" in other areas.

[Conspiracy Guy]

Good Post Tailgunner Joe.

[Raymond Hendrix]

People want the government to be their mommy. It will not change now because people are used to being controlled and they are used to the hand outs. Too bad that America went down the tubes so quick.

[E Rocc]

I see no difference between right and left on this issue.

The primary difference between the "right" and the "left" is that the statist premise (the idea that government should have the authority to make what is "right" mandatory) is under debate on the right and a given on the left.

-Eric

[Tailgunner Joe]

In matters of conscience, ignore the majority.

[eBelasco]

Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating people about the potential danger and allowing them to make their own decisions, or should they seize the power of government and force people to make the "right" decision?

If second-hand smoke was a threat to my health, I should be responsible for removing myself from that threat. Cars are a threat to my health sometimes, so I don't walk on the freeway. I should not be able to restrict someone else from smoking.

[Just another Joe]

PUFF!

[Tailgunner Joe]

Don't forget that cars create smoke too. If the nico-nazis get away with taking away your cigs for "public" health, the eco-nazis will use the same reason to take away your car.

[Just another Joe]

The tobacco bans bulldoze all the barriers to intrusive regulation, establishing the precedent that the rights and/or liberties of the individual can be violated whenever the local city council decides that the "public good" demands it.

Used the word "rights" and you will have the statists demanding to see where that "right" is enumerated in the constitution.

[Lorianne]

I give up tons of freedom (as do you) by concession to live in a society of laws. I cannot do anything I please anywhere I please. If I want to do that, I should go live as a hermit in a deserted land. To live in society means giving up some of your freedoms. It is the social contract. I cannot do any damn thing I want, any time I want, anyplace I want.

For just one example (out of hundreds of thousands), I cannot walk around nude in public or even on my own property in my front yard. There are literally thousands of laws which restrict your freedom to do anything you choose. That is the "price" of living with other people. If you want to do anything you please any time, you have to live outside of communities of law.

[Mister Baredog]

Tracinski

I hate to show my ignorance but who?

[netmilsmom]

Yes you're right, however we do this for the common good.
When the preface of the common good is based on lies, then it really isn't the common good is it.
And remember, when we give this freedom to the government, it can take any shape or form.

[gtech]

We're not talking about anarchy, we're talking about the rights of people who own property (restaurants, etc) to make their own decisions. If it's legal to do something on your front porch, then the government has no business telling you that you can't allow it on your property. I am not a smoker, and I am enjoying the smoke-free environment, but I am strongly against the idea of a government taking away the property rights of individuals who, if they were really concerned about their health, would vote with their dollars and create a market for smoke-free establishments.

[laredo44]

To live in society means giving up some of your freedoms.

Living in society does not mean giving up freedoms at all. It means ceding the power to secure your rights, including freedom, to government. That which you cite as the yielding up of freedoms is actually you violating the rights of others in the first place.

[Lorianne]

I agree. The government should make smoking policy on private property. The property owner should make and enforce his/her own smoking policy.

My comments were in regard to the public realm, where I feel we all are called upon to make concessions to living in a society of laws in close proximity to others. We are all "restricted" in our behaviour in the public realm. Smokers, IMO, are not exempt from this.

[Tailgunner Joe]

The law does not allow you to restrict my NATURAL GOD-GIVEN RIGHTS. Our Constitution and civilization are not based on "social contract," which is a socialist invention.