Free Republic

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) -- The day the Legislature approved a smoking ban for most North Dakota businesses, Dennis Laches put a sign on his laundry and television repair shop, announcing he would close when the ban took effect Aug. 1. "Nobody knew if he was going to go through with it," said Troy Mosbrucker, the mayor of Mott, a town of about 800 in southwestern North Dakota. "He had a point to prove, and he proved it." As promised, Laches closed his business that day. He said it had nothing to do with his pack-a-day habit. Rather, he said, it...

The Hazards of a Smoke-Free Environment The Real Threat Is Not Cigarettes But the Unfettered Power of Government By Robert W. Tracinski An epidemic of local smoking bans has spread across the nation--in 25 states from Arizona to Maine to Oregon--under the pretense of protecting people from the alleged threat of "second-hand" smoke. But 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...