Bjørn Stærk (not a smoker himself) believes that the UK is making a mistake in considering a ban on smoking in pubs, restaurants, etc. A debate ensues on his web page, centered primarily on civil liberties. Liberty, one contributor writes is:
...the freedom to do what you want with your own property. Do you own the disco?
Bjørn is not convinced by the evidence that second hand smoke is dangerous to your health. The debate on the page devolves into astonishingly uninformed debate on what a monopoly is. There is the suggestion that market forces should decide the matter: those who prefer not to experience second hand smoke can go to smoke-free bars; others can go to bars where smoking is allowed.
The Cato Institute is not up in arms about banning smoking in public places (though they are about taxing tobacco, the settlement, and statistics on tobacco-related deaths). Reason objects in a fairly lukewarm manner, making hypocrisy the punchline of their case.
The reason why Cato and Reason can't or won't mobilize a strong argument against smoking bans is because they know it has merit.
The objections offered by Bjørn and others who have weighed in propose the following logic:
- It is by no means proven that secondhand smoke is dangerous
- Depriving people of their right to smoke in public places violates their civil rights
- Market forces, rather than regulation, are better suited to solve the problem of people who are otherwise bothered by smoke
Let's take this one by one:
1. Second hand smoke may not be dangerous
The issue isn't really whether second hand smoke can be dangerous; the issue at what levels of exposure it's dangerous. Someone who works in a smoke-filled room all day inhales the equivalent of several cigarettes; someone who smells smoke on the street probably inhales a negligible amount. Add to that the fact that different people exhibit varying sensitivity to smoke, and it would be reckless of a public health authority to accept one interpretation of conflicting and inconclusive research.
2. Depriving people of their right to smoke in public places violates their civil rights
We have a lot of rights that should be inviolable: the right to profess a religion or none at all, the right to express our opinions and our feelings on virtually any matter, the right to vote in secret, etc. States have differing (and often contradictory) philosophies about our right to hurt ourselves. In this particular case, it's about the right to choose professions (or in extreme cases, make a living at all) without accepting undue health hazards versus the right to smoke. "Smokers' rights" advocates are imposing their right to indulge in a nasty, unhealthy, and expensive habit at the expense of other people's health.
One way to test this argument is to ask what a reasonable policy would be if it were proven that second hand smoke is dangerous. Would anyone actually say that smokers have a right to endanger other people's health as a matter of civil liberties? Unless the answer is yes, the civil rights argument is nothing but a red herring.
3. Market forces, rather than regulation, are better suited to solve the problem of people who are otherwise bothered by smoke
Markets are an efficient way of distributing scarce resources. One could argue that the demand for smoke-free bars and restaurants (much like the demand for kosher, vegan, or halal restaurants) should be sufficient to provide a supply of such establishments. But that ignores the social realities of smoking. Smokers and non-smokers don't prefer to segregate themselves from each other, and there are in fact a number of people who smoke socially, i.e., when they are around other smokers. This is to say that you can't separate the demand for smoke-free environments from the demand for smoker-free environments. It is, after all, one thing to say that you prefer to avoid smoke; it's quite another to say you prefer to avoid smokers. And once an environment has smoke in it, non-smokers are in no position to ask their particular smoking friends to abstain.
Of course, the reason for smoking bans has nothing to do with guests. It has to do with employees who are exposed to second hand smoke in their work. The market mechanism that would apply here is that these employees have the choice of quitting or not applying for a job that exposes them to second hand smoke. But unless you are willing to argue that people have a choice about working with asbestos, radioactive materials, etc., you can't argue that making a livelihood is a choice.
It all nets out in a question of whether second-hand smoke is dangerous to your health. If you believe that it isn't, you can argue that all other considerations are only a question of convenience and preference.
But "not proven to cause damage" is not the same as "proven not to cause damage." It seems irrefutable that a lot of second hand smoke will cause some problems to people's health; it is unlikely that any amount of smoke will always cause damage. Since tobacco smoke is of no benefit to anyone, there is no moral argument to made for taking the chance while we await the research results.
Ban on smoking is good, responsible policy that violates no libertarian principles. Its primary purpose is to protect the health of individuals who would otherwise work in smoke-filled environment, and I am entirely comfortable with the secondary effects that it reduces smoking overall.
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