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The Smoking Ban Is Fascist and Wrong

May 12, 2009 11:49 PM

have railed against Madison's smoking ban since the beginning, and I am saddened to see that it will most likely go statewide. I'm not a smoker, and I never have been. Nor do I plan on ever becoming one. And I do agree that it's "nice" to go out and not come home smelling like smoke. But here's the thing: none of that undoes the fact that the smoking ban needlessly infringes on the rights of business owners to run their businesses as they see fit. As a small-business owner myself, I cringe at the thought of the government regulating my business down to the point of telling me what otherwise legal things my clients can and cannot do while they are in my office. As a citizen, I'm wary of the precedent this sets.

Several of my fellow bloggers have gone on record in support of the smoking ban. Chris Walker, a contributor at Dane101, calls the ban "justifiable," saying that

[I]f . . . patrons are seeking to have a pleasant experience, who are we to say that tavern owners have a "right" to essentially poison them? Sure, one can argue that the patrons don't necessarily have to enter such an environment; if they wanted to, they could go to a bar whose owner decided, on their own, to make it smoke-free. But what if a restaurant, instead of allowing smoking, placed a few drops of arsenic in customers' drinks? Do they have a "right" to do that?

There are two flaws with Mr. Walker's statement here. First, it's not that bar owners have a right to poison their customers, it's that they have a right to determine how their establishments run. A business like a bar or restaurant is privately owned. In my opinion, if you own something, that means you get to decide what to do with it. If you own a business, you get to decide what goes and what doesn't. Removing that right is the same thing as removing the right to self-determination as far as the bar or restaurant is concerned. And that's not ok.

Second, Mr. Walker's attempt to analogize allowing smoking to putting poison in the food isn't very persuasive, in part because it's not a very close analogy. People know that smoking is bad for you, and it's pretty clear when you're in an environment that allows smoking. Going into a bar or a restaurant with a smoking section constitutes notice that you're in a situation where smoking happens. If you choose to stay, then, you've made that choice with full knowledge of the consequences. That's entirely different from a restaurant owner putting arsenic in your food without your knowledge. In the former situation, you know the danger and choose to stay; in the latter, you had no idea that you were in danger to begin with.

A closer analogy would be a situation where the waitress tells you that all entrees come with arsenic, a deadly poison that results in death in most cases and then tells you that if you eat any of the food, you will most certainly die. If a rational, competent person, under those circumstances, actually ate the food and died, then it wouldn't be right to say that it was the proprietor's fault, I don't think. You're free to make choices, even if you choose stupidly.

Emily Mills also supports the ban:

I firmly believe in the freedom and liberty of people--which stops once it begins to infringe upon the freedom and liberty of others, like my right not to inhale your smoke when I'm trying to enjoy some live music or have a meal.

But with all due respect to Ms. Mills, she doesn't have a right to listen to music or eat a meal without inhaling someone else's smoke. When you step into public, you run the risk of encountering things you don't like or find disgusting. That's just part of living in a free society. If I'm walking down the street, I understand that people might show me pictures of aborted fetuses, shout insults at me, or subject me to the smell of their dog's feces. It might be inconsiderate of people to subject me to these things, but that doesn't mean that I have the absolute moral right to be free from them. Similarly, no one has the absolute moral right to be free from smoke when they're in public or in a private establishment. If people did have that right, then smoking should be banned altogether.

On the other hand, bar owners do have moral rights here: they have the right to set the rules for their establishments. The smoking ban strips them of that right and puts them at the mercy of public preference. This is, frankly, unacceptable and un-American. I'm honestly sad to live in a state where this is going on.

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