An Endless Stream of Cigarettes and Magazines
The District of Columbia is considering enacting a
comprehensive smoking ban in bars and restaurants. (Interestingly, pundit Christopher Hitchens actually testified before the DC Council over the matter.)
I hate smoking. It’s bad for you, bad for me, makes you smell bad, and it tastes like you are licking an ashtray if you kiss a girl who smokes. On the other hand, I enjoy passing around the flavored-tobacco hookah once in awhile, and also like to have a nice cigar every 2 or 3 months. But I’m OK with only being allowed to do those things in a private home (people who smoke cigars in regular (i.e., non-“cigar bars”) are obnoxious anyway). And if Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that smoking is sexy (I don’t care what the American Cancer Society says, it is.)
I suppose I have a bit of a libertarian streak in me, and I have some sympathy with those who resent the ever-encroaching “nanny-state.” Libertarians, broadly speaking, believe that you should have an absolute right to do what you want with your body. But not really. No libertarian that I have ever met thinks that one’s absolute right of self would extend to being permitted to blow themselves up in a crowded shopping centre. So, the rule is really more, you have an absolute right to do what you like with your body as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. Which is why smoking bans have absolutely nothing to so with libertarianism at all. Science firmly establishes the health risks of second-hand smoke.
The libertarian argument might hold water if what DC (or, in the past, NYC) was proposing a complete ban on use, possession, or sale of tobacco products. (Regardless of the issue of bodily freedom, the government already wastes enough money on an ineffective war on drugs, I’d much rather the government spend its limited resources on securing the citizenry from criminals and terrorists than enforce a total ban on tobacco use.) But NYC’s, California’s, and now (probably) DC’s smoking ban don’t prohibit anyone from smoking – they prohibit you from smoking in public indoor spaces where you are polluting the lungs of the people who work there (and, incidentally, the patrons).
And I don’t buy that the conservative panacea of “the market” should be relied on. The market is failing – in my informal, but broadbased survey of DC bars, I am aware of none – zero – than ban smoking (I can only even think of a couple of restaurants that do it). I also know that DC has one of the lowest smoking rates of any city in the country. The simple fact is that bar managers are mentally stuck with the status quo, and the market is simply failing.
But are there less restrictive means? It depends. If you truly believe that the ban is designed to protect workers, probably not. (I’m not an expert on these anti-smoke tobacco filters, but my understanding is that they are quite expensive, and not extremely effective). On the other hand, if you cynically believe that the purpose of the ban is to protect patrons (which is almost certainly true – if jurisdictions cared about the health and welfare of bar staff, they would have a minimum wage higher than Uncle Sam’s shameful $2.13 per hour), I think that the proper way to handle the issue would be to sell smoking licenses. A proposal:
(1) Ban smoking in restaurants, except in outdoor seating.
(2) Take the number of bar liquor licenses, and multiply that by the percentage of people who smoke in the target jurisdiction.
(3) Take that number, and auction off the smoking licenses.
(4) Require smoking-licensed bars to prominently display – inside and out of the restaurant – that they allow smoking inside.
(5) Raise the minimum pay for employees in smoking establishments.
(6) The auction proceeds, along with the proceeds from any fines levied against unlicensed bars who allow someone to smoke, should be used to (a) pay for the smoking police, then (b) what’s left should be sent into the jurisdiction’s public health programs.
Not perfect, I suppose, but seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
comprehensive smoking ban in bars and restaurants. (Interestingly, pundit Christopher Hitchens actually testified before the DC Council over the matter.)
I hate smoking. It’s bad for you, bad for me, makes you smell bad, and it tastes like you are licking an ashtray if you kiss a girl who smokes. On the other hand, I enjoy passing around the flavored-tobacco hookah once in awhile, and also like to have a nice cigar every 2 or 3 months. But I’m OK with only being allowed to do those things in a private home (people who smoke cigars in regular (i.e., non-“cigar bars”) are obnoxious anyway). And if Hollywood has taught me anything, it’s that smoking is sexy (I don’t care what the American Cancer Society says, it is.)
I suppose I have a bit of a libertarian streak in me, and I have some sympathy with those who resent the ever-encroaching “nanny-state.” Libertarians, broadly speaking, believe that you should have an absolute right to do what you want with your body. But not really. No libertarian that I have ever met thinks that one’s absolute right of self would extend to being permitted to blow themselves up in a crowded shopping centre. So, the rule is really more, you have an absolute right to do what you like with your body as long as it doesn’t harm anyone else. Which is why smoking bans have absolutely nothing to so with libertarianism at all. Science firmly establishes the health risks of second-hand smoke.
The libertarian argument might hold water if what DC (or, in the past, NYC) was proposing a complete ban on use, possession, or sale of tobacco products. (Regardless of the issue of bodily freedom, the government already wastes enough money on an ineffective war on drugs, I’d much rather the government spend its limited resources on securing the citizenry from criminals and terrorists than enforce a total ban on tobacco use.) But NYC’s, California’s, and now (probably) DC’s smoking ban don’t prohibit anyone from smoking – they prohibit you from smoking in public indoor spaces where you are polluting the lungs of the people who work there (and, incidentally, the patrons).
And I don’t buy that the conservative panacea of “the market” should be relied on. The market is failing – in my informal, but broadbased survey of DC bars, I am aware of none – zero – than ban smoking (I can only even think of a couple of restaurants that do it). I also know that DC has one of the lowest smoking rates of any city in the country. The simple fact is that bar managers are mentally stuck with the status quo, and the market is simply failing.
But are there less restrictive means? It depends. If you truly believe that the ban is designed to protect workers, probably not. (I’m not an expert on these anti-smoke tobacco filters, but my understanding is that they are quite expensive, and not extremely effective). On the other hand, if you cynically believe that the purpose of the ban is to protect patrons (which is almost certainly true – if jurisdictions cared about the health and welfare of bar staff, they would have a minimum wage higher than Uncle Sam’s shameful $2.13 per hour), I think that the proper way to handle the issue would be to sell smoking licenses. A proposal:
(1) Ban smoking in restaurants, except in outdoor seating.
(2) Take the number of bar liquor licenses, and multiply that by the percentage of people who smoke in the target jurisdiction.
(3) Take that number, and auction off the smoking licenses.
(4) Require smoking-licensed bars to prominently display – inside and out of the restaurant – that they allow smoking inside.
(5) Raise the minimum pay for employees in smoking establishments.
(6) The auction proceeds, along with the proceeds from any fines levied against unlicensed bars who allow someone to smoke, should be used to (a) pay for the smoking police, then (b) what’s left should be sent into the jurisdiction’s public health programs.
Not perfect, I suppose, but seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
posted by Jason at 08:35
6 Comments:
If you take the second-hand smoke argument used to justify bans to its logical extreme, no one would be allowed to drive cars, either, which put out an awful lot more smoke than cigarettes. Sure, cars are useful and cigarettes are not, but we allow all sorts of personal behaviors that are minimally harmful to others. What next, regulate jukebox volumes to protect patrons from deafness? It's the same principle. What public ban advocates forget (or skirt using the utterly insincere "worker's rights" rubric, is that just as smoker's can stay home so can diners and drinkers. They make the choice to enter smoking establishments and then bitch because there's smoke in the air. Since business owners have never been sympathetic to this plainly lunatic reasoning, it now falls to the tyrranny of the majority to suppress the rights of law abiding-smokers so that nonsmokers can be insulated from the consequences of their decisions to enter certain types of establishments. They could have gone to MacDonald's; they could have cooked at home; they could have eaten or drank (weather permitting) at outdoor establishments; they could have taken out a small business loan and opened a non-smoking bar. Instead, the nannies like to impose their will on others to suit their own convenience. What a lovely basis for public policy.
To paraphrase, if you take the second-hand smoke argument used to oppose bans to its logical extreme, you could never have any regulation of conduct. As a factual matter, I suggest you look into the science behind second-hand smoke. As a worker protection measure - disingenuous, perhaps - there is ample precedent for banning smoking in bars and restaurants. Back to our discussion last week on your blog, CL, I don't think Congress was really concerned about Interstate Commerce when it passed the Clean Air Act, Civil Rights Acts, of the Endangered Species Act. When you grant powers to a government agency, they are almost invariably going to use their powers in a manner not envisioned when the powers are granted. One of the curses of democracy, I suppose.
"Tyranny of the majority"? I'm actually a tad insulted that you would quote the Founders on this issue - smokers are killing themselves, and others, with a dangerous and addictive product. Period. Making someone smoke at home isn't tyranny, at worst it's an inconvenience. Spare me the patriotic and immoderate rhetoric. You sort of sound like the shirtless, drunken hillbilly on COPS who just got arrested for slapping his girlfriend for the third time this month as he’s getting pushed, handcuffed, into the back of the squad car, “I GOT RIGHTS, MAN, I GOT RIGHTS!!!” Please.
But assuming, arguendo, that the purpose of a smoking ban is to protect bar patrons, your argument still lacks merit. You state non-smokers can stay home, and to that I posit: why is it the NS who must stay home? Of course he can, but so can the smoker. The fact that the status quo favors smokers isn't particularly relevant as to whose "rights" are being infringed. Ending slavery extinguished the property rights of slaveholders as well. There is no "right" to smoke in public, you are simply currently ALLOWED to do so. People never had a "right" to drink and drive, it just was not illegal. There is ample historic precedent for eliminating "rights", CL. Values change, and in particular when values change in response to science and reason, it is not some sort of "tyranny" to change the rules of what is, and what is not allowed. I mean, would you argue that women in the Netherlands have had their "rights" taken away because when they married their husband, he had no legal right to go to a prostitute? Why should a smoker’s right to pollute a NS’s lungs outweigh the right of a NS to socialize free of certain carcinogens?
So, fine, it’s not necessarily inaccurate to state that the “rights” of a smoker are being taken away. But for me, the parallels is to the right of a person to drink and drive, to buy alcohol when wasted, to drive a vehicle with very bad fuel economy, to smoke in a government building, to drive in a car with a child outside a car seat. Rail all you like against seat belt/helmet laws, drug possession laws, prostitution's illegality, but the parallel is wrong: an indifferent stranger standing next to someone doing any of those things is not anymore likely to get cancer; that’s just not the case with a smoker in a bar.
Both of you are former bar employees, as am I, so I am surprised to hear you dismiss the argument that banning smoking protects the rights of workers. Aside from the shamefully low wages and disrespectful treatment by (some) patrons, the second-hand smoke was one of the worst things about working in a bar. It aggravated my allergies and I was always red-eyed and runny-nosed. Oh yeah, and I could get lung cancer. I think that banning smoking in bars and restaurants is a perfectly reasonable extention of other workplace safety laws.
As for the economic impact, what are the stats for NY and LA, which both banned smoking in recent years? Coincidentally, I visited NY two years ago, right after the ban passed, and I visited LA one year ago, right after their ban was enacted. And it was sooooooo nice to go out and enjoy a smoke-free evening! Since roughly 25% of the US population smokes, it seems as though bars and restaurants would gain more non-smoking patrons than would lose smoking patrons.
My parents are vehement non-smokers, and it's rubbed off on my, although for the sake of tolerance I shrug it off most of the time now because I believe adults should be able to make their own choices.
I didn't really think about it until the smoking bans went into affect, but working at bars in college, at Put-in-Bay and in Ireland, I often went home smokey.
I think that smoking bars and non-smoking bars would be fair enough. I've always wanted a non-smoking bar to open near me. I think that an outdoor section is good, but only in a temperate climate that makes it accessible most of the year. I'm not sure that would be a good solution in Cleveland or Boston.
Moose: I would certainly prefer a world where every bar and restaurant were smoke-free. And frankly, despite CL's protestations, it's pretty clear that the ball is rolling in that direction. Sure, it'll happen much later in Cleveland that it will in Phoenix, but it will happen nonetheless.
Claudia: I think you missed the nuances in my point. I think it's naive to suggest that the motive of most legislators who would like to ban smoking is worker protection; like I said, if these people were worried about workers they would raise the minimum wage or push owners to provide health care. They don't really care about bartenders and servers, that's just the hook. The people pushing these bans are almost always public health advocates, not waitstaff or organized labor. I don't disagree with any of your points, I just think that it's rather disingenuous to rely on those arguments, because that's not what's really going on.
You can't cite to American Cancer Society as supporting your position on second hand smoke. They are called a biased source. I am not arguing that Second Hand smoke doesn't affect your health but it is certainly not to the level that ACS is posting it at.
BTW, the smokig license thing is my idea you turd.
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