Colorado's Indoor Smoking Ban

[DavidDvorkin]

My wife, who's been very anti-smoking for a long time, wrote this up as an answer to a letter in a local free newspaper. I converted it to HTML and put it on our site.

http://www.dvorkin.com/essays/cosmoban.html

We don't entirely agree on this. Rather, I love the effects of the new Colorado law. It makes life far more pleasant for me. But I also respond positively to the argument that restaurant owners should have the right to decide that issue for their own property.

Here's her argument. She hopes to expand it in the future.

[MadMaddie]

1. We have the law in WA...I play Bingo and all the Bingo halls

thought they would go broke....nope they have more customers....

Owners should have the choice to allow smoking but they should also pay for goood healthcare for their workers...

[politicat]

2. This is one place where I don't go along with the Dem party line.

I have no objections to the way Boulder handled it before the law: a bar or restaurant could offer a smoking section if they had a separate ventilation system and essentially an airlock. Any establishment willing to pay the outlay to put such a creature in had the market pretty much cornered. The current law however, gives no reasonable workaround and it is the worst type of nanny-stating. I am an adult and I have the rights and responsibilities to ensure that the environments which I enter are reasonably safe.

I actually would rather have smokers sequestered in their own spaces instead of hanging around in alleys, street corners and parking lots. While the anti-smoking bigots won't accept it, smokers are people, too, and should not be subjected to an increased potential for getting robbed, raped or assaulted - all highly possible given the requirements the new law put in place. You may disagree, but the drug is legal, and the harm it causes to the smoker and those who choose to be around the smoker are about the same as the harm caused by frequent alcohol or pot consumption, red meat consumption and fried foods consumption. And that's a damned slippery slope - it's already okay to ridicule fat people and stoners, as well as smokers. How long until there's a fried foods tax and then restrictions?

Further, business owners have the right to decide what clientele they choose to service. I've been very proud of Bella's in Longmont, who went from being open to a private club requiring membership. They are bucking the system and that's a good thing. There is no one forced to work in an environment where smokers are; it is well known that a condition of working in a traditional bar is that the staff will be exposed to tobacco smoke. I quit one restaurant job when the place went NON-smoking; my tips dropped to nothing and I couldn't afford to continue working for 2.13 an hour. I realize the risks I took with my health (far better than most people do, in fact, as I have actually read the real second hand smoke studies).

The best form of anarchy is that of the sole proprietorship: individuals trading and working within a community, rather than servicing the whims of stockholders who don't give a damn. And if a sole proprietorship wishes to cater to a clientele who is underserved (as non-smoking bars once were, and as smoking bars are now) then good for them! And if I choose to patronize businesses who serve clientele you don't like, then that's my business. Stay out of my business, and I'll not complain when you go where the hell you want to go. Seems like an easy way to live, personally... much easier than always being busy-body about who is doing what when and where and with whom.

[Creideiki]

7. Are you suggesting

that if someone next to me eats red meat all the time, I'm at a greater risk of heart disease? (Note: we have fully established that being near someone smoking increases the non-smoker's risk of heart disesase.)

This isn't even about people "choosing" to be around smokers. In places without a smoking ban, the only choice is to never go out. Is that reasonable? The place where I go now has an outdoors patio where the smokers congregate and if I ever (very rarely go out there) now I am actually choosing to be near the smokers. Before, I never had that choice.

[politicat]

8. Show me the studies.

The increased risk of heart disease does not take poverty or stress into account, both far better predictors of heart disease than second-hand smoke. Persons who live in the vicinity of busy highways have a higher risk of heart disease than those who don't.

It is about choice. The Boulder method worked well. Non-smokers had a high degree of autonomy in their choices, while smokers had a lesser degree, but both communities were served. Had Denver tried the Boulder method, I doubt you would have been inconvenienced. But instead, it didn't even try the alternative, and now you'll never know.

[Democrats_win]

3. I'm not a fan of the property owner argument here.

Americans will always discuss the role of government in our society. However it is ALWAYS true that government will eventually get involved. The real question is WHEN will it get involved? Will it get involved when it can prevent people from getting cancer or will it get involved when it's too late by paying medical bills after people get cancer?

The property owner aspect of this is not really right because the property owner does give up some rights when they open for business and hire employees. Property owners don't have to open for business. If they do, the property owner does not have the right to endanger employees' health just because they own the property.

Likewise, if there were no health inspectors, government would still get involved when the coroner arrives to take away poisoned customers. Instead, we take the logical and preventative step of having health inspectors. The government also gets involved by enforcing property rights when there are trespassers. It doesn't seem right for them to accept some government interference when it's to their advantage but absolutely refuse it when it's to the public's advantage.

It's not like we're stealing their property to build a Wal-Mart which should always be forbidden.

[DavidDvorkin]

4. My wife's counterargument to me

Is, what about hazardous materials? We already have laws about, e.g., asbestos in restaurants and other buildings.

The Libertarian stance means I'd have to allow such stuff in buildings, as long as it stayed inside the building and didn't endanger the general public. I don't like that position, but to be consistent, I have to take it.

Aargh.

[MissMarple]

5. Smokers lost their manners somewhere along the way.

Too bad for them.

[DavidDvorkin]

6. I'm not so sure they ever had them

No one even talked about the rights of non-smokers till relatively recently. That was when some smokers started insisting that non-smokers weren't really bothered by their smoke and it was just a plot to force them to give up smoking.