The Case Against Smoking Bans
Thomas A Lambert in Regulation Magazine on the Case Against Smoking Bans in "public places."
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1 comment:
This serious examination of the issue is commendable, yet it leaves out some essential elements.
Smoking is not a "right" defined by any law, but is simply a personal choice, like farting, spitting or masturbating. Just a habit. Your choice to engage in this personal behavior does not carry with it some "right" to compel others to participate in what you do. If you deliberately fart in another person's face, knowing that he does not welcome this, you are infringing on his rights. If you spit on another person, you can be charged with the crime of battery.
Smoking where others are present is an offensive act of assault. Your personal need to smoke is your own problem, usually a result of addiction, and it is morally wrong for a smoker to impose the consequences of his personal choice on unconsenting others.
Should smoking around others be banned by law? Well, we already have laws against assault and battery. Libertarians like me deny that there exists any "right" to commit acts of violent force against others. I do not choose to inhale the stink of a smoker, and that is sufficent to deny to any smoker some alleged "right" to dump his bodily wastes on me without my consent.
Let cigarette smokers hide away in some secluded corner where they are affecting only their fellow-addicts, along the lines of the opium dens which once prevailed in Chinatown. Smoking, like spitting, is offensive as a public practice, and society can quite appropriately tell smokers to refrain from imposing their wastes on others. My face and my lungs are not your ashtray; they are mine and mine alone, so, smokers, kindly leave them the way I want them.
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