Lighting Up - Israelis breathe easier because they still smoke.

Reason Online | March 5, 2002 | By Howard Mortman

[metesky]

Lighting Up
Israelis breathe easier because they still smoke.
By Howard Mortman -

JERUSALEM -- Armed security everywhere. Checkpoints at the entrances to shopping malls. The dangers of hanging out in public places.

So what's good about Israel these days?

Tobacco smoke. And lots of it.

Israel wrote the book on homeland security that America is now reading cover to cover. But Israel has apparently skipped the American treatise on how to turn smokers into social outcasts.

Smoke is everywhere. Even as smoking is against the law.

During a trip last week to Israel, I discovered the following: Secretaries in government buildings smoke -- inside the building! Kids on the street smoke -- between Talmud classes. Staffers in the office of the Foreign Minister smoke -- perhaps explaining why Shimon Peres leaves his windows open.

And yes, tourists smoke too -- they can light up a Cuban cigar in the lobby of the Tel Aviv Hilton. (Try doing that in the Washington Hilton.) Maybe because Cuba is not in the Axis of Evil, Isael can be in the Axis of Tobacco.

What makes all of this noteworthy is that each public puff means a law is being broken. Flouted, no less.

As of October 1, smoking is punishable by a $60 fine in nearly every Israeli public place, completing a cycle of prohibition dating back to 1983. With the exception of a few designated smoking rooms, shopping malls, schools, pharmacies, banks, post offices, airports, theaters, lecture halls, hospitals, buses, trains, and clinics are all supposed to be smoke free.

But they're not.

Why? Because people here love to smoke. And because many are unaware of the regulations against their behavior.

At a restaurant near the Sea of Galilee, I ask two security agents if smoking is allowed inside. They both say yes.

Then I point to a sign on a nearby wall picturing a cigarette with the international "no" line slashed through it. "Oh," they respond (same word in Hebrew as in English).

Then they turn the table on me. Is smoking banned in America?, they ask. Of course, I say. They laugh and ask again, What do they do if you smoke, call the police?

I tell them I don't think police actually arrest anyone. Instead smokers suffer shame and humiliation from colleagues, friends, and passersby.

They laugh again. I join in.

Banning cigarette smoking in Israel is a laughing matter. A recent Jerusalem Post article reported that Health Minister Nissim Dahan said municipalities and local authorities are inadequately enforcing regulations barring smoking in public places "because fines aren't popular in an election year."

Ah, elections -- coming to Israel just in the nic-o-tine. What an American way to run your life. Just like regulations.

Viceroy cigarette billboards in the region read: "The Big Taste of America." Thankfully, though, the big taste of big American regulation has yet to be sampled.

Israel does not require health warnings on cigarettes. Israel does not hike cigarette taxes to discourage smoking. Children are permitted to buy cigarettes and to smoke. Cigarette companies are not forced to cut nicotine and tar levels in their products. And Israel has yet to sue tobacco importers and manufacturers to pay for smoking-related health problems.

But someday these approaches to social engineering may all come to pass. And likely be ignored.

Which leads to an excellent point raised in a Jerusalem Post editorial last summer: "It is self defeating for a society to pass laws that are blatantly and widely disregarded - especially those whose violation is highly visible."

Yes, yes. So why pass them?

Then again, one can argue that if a commonly ignored anti-smoking law is all Israel is guilty of, so be it.

There are more important things for Israel to police. Terrorism, not tobacco, for instance. As the Jerusalem Post also pointed out, "... [O]ur overburdened police cannot be expected to rush over and hand out 230 [shekel] tickets to smokers in public places."

No, Israel can't lighten up on security. But at least its people still light up. On cigarettes.

Howard Mortman is senior columnist for National Journal's The Hotline.

[metesky]

Did I neglect to mention that my mother, my wife's mother and the mothers of all my friends smoked when they were pregnant and afterwards?

I can not think of one of them that died of a "smoking related illness".

I do know a number, including my own mother, who were killed by incompetent nincompoops masquerading as doctors.

[quebecois]

This story confirms something that I've been saying for a long time: The USA is NOT a free country, but rather a highly regulated administrative dictatorship.

If you define freedom as "being able to do whatever you wish so long as you don't harm someone else", then the USA is absolutely not a free country. Nearly every aspect of our lives is highly controlled and regulated by a myriad of govt agencies which have been sicced on us by busy-body activists of all stripes.

Smoking is just the tip of the iceberg. Try starting a new business. Try hiring an employee. Almost everything, from driving your car to speaking in public, is being controlled and regulated.

Many folks complain that the American govt is corrupt and inefficient. Unfortunately, they have it all wrong. The American government is terribly efficient. In many countries, you don't have to bother paying taxes, since the govt is too inept to find you and prosecute you. Not so with our IRS. Parking, smoking, running a business....these things can all be done fairly easily in much of the world without fear of govt interference. And if some govt agent does interfere...just give him a few bucks, and he disappears! Try doing that with the EPA or OSHA.

At the end of the day, the real story here is that the American people have become such sheep that we are willing to allow our every move to be regulated by nattering nabobs of nosiness, backed up by amoral govt agencies.

[metesky]

I played high scool basketball '60, '61, 62, with a kid that had asthma. He'd run the floor like a demon for four or five minutes then sit down for a while. Never once did I hear any crying about his condition.

He helped us to a league championship and we all got to play on the Garden floor.

[Gabz]

Smokers have become the whipping boy of American society.

Thank you. Well put.

And if made aware of your lung problems, the vast majority of smokers would refrain from causing you discomfort.

[metesky]

I must have spent too long on the daily weed thread.

scool skool. There, that's better.

;O)

[Savage Beast]

“ouch”

Erase those words, Met. Hey, Jim, remove Met's comment. He didn't mean it. Oh, this is awful.

I feel like a Liberal ostrich, trying to shove my head into the sand.

[luckyluke]

"It is self defeating for a society to pass laws that are blatantly and widely disregarded - especially those whose violation is highly visible."

Well, smoking laws in the US are widely obeyed, so the above statement is not applicable to the US.

There are really two issues here: (a) the rights of non-smokers, which can be assured merely by separate airtight sections for smokers and non-smokers in public places and (b) the public health issue affecting smokers, which is a little more complicated. (Don't people have a *right* to decide whether they want to smoke or not?)

It can be debated whether an addict is capable of exercising a right to choose. If you agree with banning heroin and cocaine, it should be obvious that regulating a substance is not wrong per se. The question is whether the substance poses a significant lethal danger (so we don't end up regulating coffee and tea). As regards tobacco, the answer is unquestionably yes. So discouraging tobacco use is not necessarily a bad thing.

[Just another Joe]

We need to export some of our Lawyers over and straighten those people out.

We need to export ALL of our lawyers and straighten OURSELVES out.

[Just another Joe]

It can be debated whether an addict is capable of exercising a right to choose.

Now, shall we debate what an addict is.
Shall we use the 'old' definition or the 'new definition made by the US surgeon general specifically to include users of tobacco?

[Savage Beast]

"We need to export ALL of our lawyers and straighten OURSELVES out."

Isn't that a quote from William Shakespeare?

[Just another Joe]

Paraphrased.

[101viking]

"I guess I've spent too much time in hospitals visiting people who didn't need to be there but for their tobacco use."

I have visited people in the hospital who were in car accidents, do we ban cars? I visited a friend's kid in the hospital who fell off a skateboard, do we ban skateboards? The list can go on forever. I appreciate your compassion and the fact that you hold life precious, but it's my life, if I choose to smoke, sky dive, rock climb, or anything else that comes with a chance of risk it is my business.

Just a note for all of you who will jump up and scream that the issue is second hand smoke, the kid I cited above who hurt himslef on the skateboard? Well, it turns out that he was in a shopping center, and when the skateboard flew out from under him, it hit a woman in the ankle, fracturing it.

[mamelukesabre]

In israel it is a different situation.

Immagine telling soldiers in a battlezone that they shouldn't smoke because it is a health hazard. You know what kind of replies you are liable to get. In Israel, nearly everyone is in the military and you are at risk of being blown to bits at any minute by a suicide bomber. So the additional risk of smoking a cigarette is miniscule.

[Savage Beast]

I like Shakespeare's version better.

[alaskanfan]

Substitute the words fast food, alcohol, red meat, caffene, firearm ownership and many others in this argument to see where your rights for self determination are headed.

I too was a sufferer of asthma at a young age, also suffered with chronic bronchitis (at least once a year). I started smoking in my teens. This did not prevent me from playing highschool football or being on the wrestling and track teams.

Today, my house is the only one that I smoke in. I try to be a polite smoker and not smoke around others even when outside. I do however resent the fact that in addition to paying my share of income tax, I am being unfairly targeted financially by government because of a lifestyle decision I have made.

I thought about quitting once, but recalled the words of my Father "Nobody likes a quiter". I have not had an asthma attack in over twenty years, and contribute it to conditioning of my lungs through smoking.

When someone askes me if I smoke I reply, no, the cigatette does the smoking, I'm just the sucker.

[metesky]

Well, smoking laws in the US are widely obeyed

Not by me.

[metesky]

Isreal may be different, but I understand we have a non-smoking military.

[1Old Pro]

There are more important things for Israel to police.

perhaps we should take another page out of their homeland defense handbook.

The NYS Police wrote thousands fewer speeding tickets in the months following 9-11. They were doing more important things and highway deaths did not rise.....only their treasuries fell.

[metesky]

I remember ten or twelve years ago, the doctors in San Francisco and Isreal both went on strike at about the same time. I both cases, while the doctors were out, the death rate went down.

The Law Enforcement Growth Industry is a 15 or 20 year old file, so adjust the financial and personnel numbers accordingly.

Bear with it, it's an interesting premise.

[metesky]

In both cases the hospital death rate went down.