Posted on 05/27/2003 12:14:17 PM PDT by 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.
I almost agree with you on this statement. The only caveat I would give is indoor public places. In almost every case of outdoor public spaces the problem isn't a problem.
That said, I believe that the owner of the property, in these type of cases I believe the government entity in question would be the owner, should set the smoking policy.
I wonder if the majority of smokers are that fair?
Fair enough?
According to you it isn't a problem. Would you be agreeable to a taxpayer referendum on the matter of outdoor public places regardless of the outcome?
No, that's not what I'm saying. I argue using these assumptions:
1. Individuals have rights. Inherent in the concept of a right is a corresponding power to defend that right. That is, if someone acts to deny you a right, you are authorized to exercise power against them to stop that denial.
2. Rather than everyone acting to secure our individual rights, government is instituted to secure them. We cede some of our power to the government.
3. A law is a statement by government of what power will be applied, in our names, to those that violate rights.
Individual's rights can and do conflict all the time. Speed limits are one example you cited. I have a right to the "pursuit of happiness." You have a right to "life." I wish to pursue happiness at 150 mph. You prefer not to be in the way when I lose control of my car.
Whose right should be secured? To me, this is the crux of the argument. In some cases, like speed limits, the answer is obvious to most of us. In others, debates can get heated.
In the case of a smoking ban, I may choose to pursue happiness by smoking, you may wish to pursue happiness by avoiding smoke. Whose right is to be secured?
LOL! I did confess upfront.
General Sherman claimed if he owned Texas and Hell, he'd rent out Texas and live in Hell. ;)
Be careful, I'm a native Texan. Don't mess with Texas.
It is a waste of time to argue with people who have given up their freedom to an addiction and reason from a basis of self-indulgence.
Jefferson said "a small town" and by our standards today towns then were small already.
I live in the smallest incorporated town in NV., 14,950. That would have been a good sized city in Jeffersons time.
yitbos
IMO, smokers have been way more than "fair" ever since the cigarette jihad started. We confined ourselves to the smoking section of businesses and gathering places, but that wasn't enough. What I love were the tobacco nazis who said that since smoking was banned in the workplace and smokers were hearded out of the building to smoke, they noticed that smokers were sick more often than non smokers. Of course we were! We had to go outside in the cold, the rain, and snow to have a cigarette!
Regardless of how data can be manipulated to get whatever meaning desired, the tools and machinery in government and the legal system that have been and are being used to treat smokers like leppers WILL be used by some other group who desire to make a name for themselves simply because they don't like the habbits of another part of the population. Fast food, snack food, malt liquor, SUV's, clog dancers...take your pick...they'll all be tee'd up. And all the lemmings (useful idiots) will charge over the cliff when they are told that it's "for-the-children."
Yes you can. The entire point of the nation's Constitution is that we each can do as we damn well please; as long as it harms neither the person nor property of another.
This presents the dilemma, what is harm? You may readily accept a local ordinance prohibiting public nudity but have great difficulty in accepting a prohibition against nude sunbathing in the privacy of your own back yard.
Harm no one; do as you will.
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