LAST WEEKEND, New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg sent a uniformed squadron of police officers to interrupt The Rolling Stones in the middle of their HBO-televised concert at Madison Square Garden. The reason? They were puffing on cigarettes as they rocked and rolled on stage, an offense that put them squarely in violation of the strict citywide public smoking ban that Bloomberg signed into law last December. Luckily, the aging band members managed to finish their show and abruptly speed away from the arena before they could be collared.
Far from being simply absurd, the political trend behind this situation is terrifying. Lawmakers all across the country have gotten the idea that banning smoking in privately-owned places of public accommodation is not only their prerogative, but indeed their duty. A similar anti-smoking law has existed in the entire state of California for years, and officials in big cities like Boston and Chicago are considering following suit. By all indications, popular support is firmly behind them, with a conspicuous lack of major outrage in California, New York City or anywhere else in the nation where these bans have sprung up.
It is a sad miracle that liberty has gone so out of style in some parts of our country as to make these smoking bans possible. These laws rob individuals of their freedom and replace it with a government bureaucracy acting in loco parentis -- in the place of parents -- to regulate personal behavior with a heavy hand. Any public health benefit gained in this transaction is far outweighed by the price paid by millions in individual liberty.
Imagine the plight of a private citizen in New York trying to open a restaurant in which patrons are allowed to smoke cigarettes. He hires a staff of people who are willing to work for the wages he's offering, and he sells food to whoever's willing to come and buy lunch or dinner off his menu. He doesn't force anybody to do anything they don't want to do. If his employees don't think the work is worth the money, they can quit. If his patrons don't like the food or the atmosphere, they can stay at home or go somewhere else. But on the first night of business, a group of policemen with pistols show up at our entrepreneur's establishment in a somber mood and tell him that he owes the government hundreds of dollars in fines. And he either has to pay up or close down, because they have the guns.
This is the unpleasant reality of a smoking ban like the one in New York City. Codifying such a ban into law makes it legitimate for the government to use violence to prevent a man from acting like the one described above. Any justification of such a law must therefore give a satisfactory account of why such violence should be authorized against people who open restaurants in which they allow their customers to smoke.
The argument in favor of broad anti-smoking legislation rests on the premise that long-term exposure to second-hand smoke causes serious health problems among non-smokers. Although a direct causality has never been demonstrated to support this fact, it seems fairly intuitive and can be taken as true or not for the purposes of this argument.
In a city that does not have a strict smoking ban like that of California or New York City, it is up to individual restaurateurs to decide whether to allow smoking in their own restaurants. Customers who dine at smoking restaurants in such a free system do so of their own volition, and so any risk they incur from second-hand smoke is due to a personal choice. Likewise, employees who work in smoking restaurants either accept the added health risk from second-hand smoke in exchange for the wages they earn, or not. If there are enough workers and customers who prefer smoke-free environments and who act upon this preference, then pure profit incentive will create smoke-free places to dine and work. This is seen already in numerous unregulated establishments nationwide, where entirely non-smoking restaurants and non-smoking sections abound, without resorting to threats of coercive government sanctions.
Strict smoking bans seek to improve people's lives by robbing them of their freedom to choose what type of establishment they want to own or attend. By the same rationale, the freedom to indulge in fatty foods and alcohol should be next on the chopping block. But in a society that values freedom and detests the unnecessary use of coercion against innocent human beings, this is an unacceptable appropriation of governmental authority. Hopefully lawmakers will realize this before the Stones get chased off any more stages. They are, after all, getting a bit old for that.
(Anthony Dick's column appears
Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at adick@cavalierdaily.com.)