United Liberty
Proposed Smoking Ban in Indianapolis
Tue, 10/20/2009 - 5:34pm | posted by Matt Wittlief
Indianapolis already has a limited smoking ban. For the most part, the only places you can smoke are bars which do not employ or allow entrance to anyone under the age of eighteen, smoke shops, and bowling alleys. Smoke Free Indy, an anti-smoking activist group, is leading the charge to strengthen the ban and remove pretty much all existing exemptions.
Proposal 371, which would extend the ban, passed out of committee on October 14. It will go before the entire City-County Council on October 26. Potentially adding some strength to their position, a report from the Institute of Medicine was released the next day which supports smoking bans as an effective tool in improving public health. The folks at libertarian-minded Reason published a response to the report on their blog which questions the strength of their conclusions and provides other good background material.
I think it’s pretty clear that smoking isn’t the greatest lifestyle choice to maximize longevity. Second-hand smoke (apparently also called “passive smoking”) also has an adverse impact on health. We can all make our choices about smoking and, in today’s anti-smoking world, spend most all of our time avoiding second-hand smoke if we choose to do so. Smoking is legal. Adults should be able to congregate in public places to smoke.
After spending a few hours of research on this subject, there is reason to be cautious in determining the magnitude of the health risk posed by second-hand smoke. But, to me, that’s not really the whole issue. Owners of private property who operate an adult establishment should have the choice to allow smoking. A continuing escalation of smoking bans is an infringement on private property rights and personal liberty.
As an end note, the Marion County Health Department commissioned a report which was released in February 2002 on the economic impact of second-hand smoke in Marion County (Indianapolis). You can read the report here. It estimates that the health care costs due to second-hand smoke in 2000 were over $50M. I find it a bit amusing that in most economic studies, money being spent is equated to creating jobs and helping the economy. I guess there is a difference between good spending and bad spending.
Just a reminder of the sources of the bans, the RWJ Foundation, owned by big pharma, and the coalitions, more concerned with “social change” than the bans themselves:
http://www.rwjf.org/pr/product.jsp?ia=143&id=14912
And what the 99 million dollars was going to. Note on page seven the “inside -out”, provision going for patios later, AFTER business owners spend thousands of dollars to build them to accommodate their smoking customers, clearly showing that the tobacco control activists have ABSOLUTLY NO CONCERN about local issues or businesses. You may need to CTRL and scoll to enlarge it.
http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf
Here’s the “model ban” from page eight that many communities copied, printed, and passed. It’s the “smoking ban for dummies” It only takes a few minutes to fill in the blanks naming your community, the administrators names, and blanks to customize it to your community.
http://www.no-smoke.org/document.php?id=229
Government power real health hazard
The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation has nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed threat of “second-hand” smoke.
Indeed, the bans 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 unlimited government power.
The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or is in fact just a phantom menace, as a study published recently in the British Medical Journal indicates. The issue is: If it were harmful, what would be the proper reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating people about the potential danger and allowing them to make their own decisions, or should they seize the power of government and force people to make the “right” decision?
Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than trying to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the bans are the unwanted intrusion.
Loudly billed as measures that only affect “public places,” they have actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops and offices – places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose customers are free to go elsewhere if they don’t like the smoke. Some local bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is negligible, such as outdoor public parks.
The decision to smoke, or to avoid “second-hand” smoke, is a question to be answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married or divorced, and so on.
All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the neighbours. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must be free because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbours, and only his own judgment can guide him through it.
Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Smokers are a numerical minority, practising a habit considered annoying and unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the power of government and used it to dictate their behaviour.
That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your favourite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the unlimited intrusion of government into our lives. We do not elect officials to control and manipulate our behaviour.
If the public was honestly and truthfully informed about the effects of second-hand smoke, there would be fewer no-smoking laws in this country.
There has never been a single study showing that exposure to the low levels of smoke found in bars and restaurants with decent modern ventilation and filtration systems kills or harms anyone.
As to the annoyance of smoking, a compromise between smokers and non-smokers can be reached, through setting a quality standard and the use of modern ventilation technology.
Air ventilation can easily create a comfortable environment that removes not just passive smoke, but also and especially the potentially serious contaminants that are independent from smoking.
This has happened already in Britain guys. They’ll turn the smoker against the non-smoker and pump out all kinds of unbelievable crap all over the TV.
We are now at the stage where they are proposing fines for passive smoking to pets and an all out ban, even in your own home. It’s called extremism - when you don’t stop at reasonable measures for both sides and continue to hound one side to extinction. They are giving the people something to take their anger out on other than government.
The smoker is sneered at by people where he drank and smoked without a problem before and eventually they push it through to the extremes by banning it in public places with fines levied for any offenders, creating more crimes from anything they can. This is a disgusting and unneeded way to treat a part of your race and the creation of yet more government orientated prejudice.
However, I will add that anyone who is told passive smoking can harm should step into a smoker’s room or have smoker’s bars because the effects are disputed, not definite either way and I keep my habits to myself when they may be harmful to others!
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