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Zealots blow smoke on property rights
By:
Mr. Jim Waters
Buoyed by their success in forcing an un-American smoking ban on the private
business owners of Lexington, Kentucky’s anti-smoking Taliban is now conducting
operations across the Commonwealth. For these zealots, anything short of a total
prohibition will not suffice.
“Smoking is not a constitutional right,” they preach. “Besides, it’s bad for
your health.”
Both statements are true yet equally irrelevant when considering whether
government force can be enlisted to ban smoking on private property.
Smoking is neither politically popular nor a constitutional right, per se. Yet
it remains a legal activity. If successful, we wonder what government will try
to ban next – screaming babies or perhaps fatty foods.
After all, nothing in our Constitution addresses eating Big Macs at McDonald’s
either, yet the high fat content makes doing so an unhealthy practice, too. How
long will it take the “obese police” (funded by an obesity lawsuit) to show up
at city council meetings and demand that Big Macs be outlawed?
These government do-gooders seem interested only in bullying industries that
happen to be politically incorrect at the time. After all, it’s much easier to
persuade citizens who may just happen to dislike smoking or fast food to side
with them. But if unchecked, government’s appetite for confiscation and power
will never be satisfied.
“The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain
ground,” warned Thomas Jefferson.
America’s founders reasoned that when the rights of private property owners are
trampled under, other constitutional privileges would soon be endangered.
Philosopher John Locke described private property as a protective “fence” to
corral a person’s liberty and protect the rest of his rights.
“Property rights have crucially contributed to our freedom and prosperity,”
concurred Kentucky Supreme Court Justice William Graves in a courageous dissent
regarding a ruling that upheld Lexington’s smoking ban in public places.
Tragically, Graves’ well-reasoned argument failed to slow the court’s 6-1
stampede over rights guaranteed by our Constitution.
The meddlers claim they do not intend to impede our property rights. “We just
don’t think smokers should pollute our air,” they reason. They forget that in
the United States of America, a majority cannot force a minority to abide by its
demands, however distasteful the latter’s actions – if legal – might be.
We don’t like smoke blown in our faces either, but we dislike government
intervention in areas in which it has no authority even more!
Customers seeking a nonsmoking atmosphere today have a lot more choices than the
days of old, in which only fast-food restaurants prohibited customers or
employees from lighting up.
In Bowling Green, for example, David Towell, owner of the Iron Skillet, a local
restaurant with quality fare, has enacted a voluntary smoking ban in its eating
section. However, customers in the restaurant’s lounge can still light up. Other
restaurant owners have decided that going smoke-free would not be the best
policy for their business.
In a recent anti-smoking forum in Bowling Green, Dr. Richard Wilson, a member of
the Barren River Tobacco Coalition and professor at Western Kentucky
University’s Department of Public Health, spoke fervently about “the very clear
evidence” that voluntary smoking bans have, in some cases, improved restaurants’
profit margins.
Thus Wilson himself makes a strong case against a government-enforced smoking
ban in restaurants. If, as he claims, an increasing number of businesses are
enacting voluntary smoking bans, why is he battling for another law intruding on
some of Kentuckians’ most sacred rights?
When presented with credible information, restaurant owners, who often operate
on razor-thin profit margins, will make the right decisions for their
operations. As a result, an increasing number of companies are going smokeless.
When Lexington’s ban was enacted, 47 percent of the community’s food
establishments had voluntarily enacted smoking bans.
“I think we should let restaurants decide how to serve their patrons,” wrote
Julian Tyler in a letter to the (Bowling Green) Daily News.
But allowing restaurant owners to decide whether they will allow smoking and
then leaving it up to individual customers is “not enough,” one of the leaders
of Lexington’s smoke-S.W.A.T. team told a reporter.
Absurd, isn’t it, that an increasing number of business owners are making what
smoking nannies believe is the right choice – voluntarily – and still it’s “not
enough”?
In the battle of ideas between government force and the free market, the forces
of regulation can never get enough. Meanwhile, lovers of freedom strive
valiantly to preserve the remnants of their God-given liberties. At stake is the
quality of our future.
Will our future be one determined by the heavy hand of government, or open to
the creative, uplifting spirit of human liberty?
-- Jim Waters is Director of Policy and Communications for the Bluegrass
Institute.
The Bluegrass Institute
is a research and educational institution offering free-market solutions
to Kentucky's most pressing problems.
http://www.bipps.org
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