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Smoking Ban is an Affront to Our Liberties
Can you say CHOICE?
(Published
02/21/02)
Everyone knows that smoking is bad for you. Everyone.
Warnings are plastered on packs and cartons of
cigarettes. The dangers of smoking are prominently
displayed on billboards and public service announcements
on television. I can't imagine that anyone who smokes
today doesn't know that it is harmful. Yet, some people
are still choosing to smoke. Where they can smoke,
however, is an issue that city officials are about to
decide. If they have their way, eventually the answer
will be nowhere.
Judy Perkins, the tobacco control officer for the City of
Lawrence, wants to follow the lead of Methuen and Andover
by banning smoking in all restaurants. She, as well as
many others, believe that second hand smoke is so harmful
that the government has to step in and force privately
owned businesses to ban smoking entirely.
This amounts to the government passing laws to protect
you from....you. In a free society this is a very
dangerous business for the government to be in. Whenever
the government (at any level) is in the business of
telling you and I what is best for ourselves (like it or
not) we have lost a little more of our freedom.
If you do not want to be exposed to second hand smoke
when you walk into a restaurant which allows smoking, you
have the freedom to get up and go somewhere else. That's
the American way. Just as smokers who enter an
establishment which voluntarily bans smoking have the
right to turn around and leave for one which allows it.
It is this freedom in a capitalist market place that will
determine which restaurants will thrive and which will
not. This decision should be left up to business owners,
not government. If a restaurant is forced to ban smoking
when the majority of their clientele are smokers, it is
tantamount to the government shutting them down.
Not only is a smoking ban an affront to the liberties of
customers who wish to smoke, it is also an affront to the
rights of restaurant owners to attract the customers they
wish to attract. If this ban is passed, people who smoke
will stream over the border to Salem New Hampshire so
they can light up. This is certainly bad for businesses
in the City of Lawrence.
Just imagine being a restaurant owner who spent thousands
of dollars to accommodate smokers in a special section,
now being told that they cannot allow this legal product
to be consumed in their establishment at all. One
restaurant owner in Andover told me his beef is that he
is not allowed to smoke in his own club. "What about
my right to smoke in my own restaurant. Don't I have any
rights?" he asked me.
This is a debate about basic rights and liberties. Non
smokers who push this anti smoking silliness may be well
intended. They want to save us from ourselves, which is
noble. But that's not the role of government. Government
should never tell you what is best for you regardless of
whether or not you want their help.
Smoking tobacco is still legal in this country. Tobacco
products are heavily regulated by the federal government
and overly taxed in many states. We give federal
subsidies to tobacco farmers to harvest their product. We
give huge tax breaks to tobacco companies like Philip
Morris. The US profits a great deal from the export of
tobacco products to other countries. In other words, the
government profits from the production of this legal
product while at the same time punishing tobacco users as
though they were second class citizens.
A restaurant owner must have the right to choose whether
or not smoking is allowed in "their" place of
business. Customers must have the right to choose which
restaurants they will patronize if being exposed to smoke
offends them. But the key word here is
"choice." The government has no business taking
those choices away from restaurant owners or patrons.
I hope the City Council will reject any attempt by Mrs.
Perkins to ban smoking in Lawrence restaurants. I don't
care how man surveys she has taken or how good she thinks
this ban will be for our health. It is our decision to
make when it comes to our own bodies. Not the City
Council, not the board of health and certainly not Mrs.
Perkins.