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SMOKING BANS IN LOUISVILLE

By:  Terry Gray

President – Forces Kentucky

          It is a sad state of affairs when our government doesn’t respect the ability of its citizens to make their own decisions about their own health.  It is a blind blanket of disrespect that holds all of us, private citizens and businesses alike, in servitude.

          An individual’s health is a private thing and something for which the person himself is solely responsible. We make choices, and ultimately we must live by those choices.  The fiber of freedom is dependent upon our right to choose.

          Not so with smoking, it seems.  There are organizations in every state that are intent upon removing our right to decide.  Smoking bans are springing up at an alarming rate and businesses are closing as a consequence.  The smoke nannies insist that there are no negative economic impacts associated with smoking bans, and all the while they push for more encompassing bans to “level the playing field.”  They know that should one area adopt a smoking ban, surrounding areas without smoking bans will enjoy the patronage of those smokers wishing to escape the tyranny of smoke-free legislation.  While smoke-free groups play with words and ignore facts, employees find themselves unemployed and without health insurance.  Businesses that have successfully operated for years are forced to close their doors.  Local governments lose revenue.

Antismoking groups receive millions of dollars from organizations such as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to promote their insidious bans, and all the while they refuse to accept the results of studies funded even partially by “Big Tobacco”.  In fact, they refuse to accept any study which does not support their cause, regardless of the research source.  The parent company of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Johnson and Johnson, likes the war on tobacco.  They manufacture alternative nicotine delivery systems and make hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-smoking legislation.

Anti-smoking groups claim to want smoking bans to protect the children, to lower healthcare costs, and to protect employees. 

Children - There are very few establishments these days that allow smoking, either by choice or by legislation.  From grocery stores to libraries, from court buildings to hospitals and schools, there is clean air in abundance. The exceptions are usually establishments that have historically catered to adult patronage and even some of those have banned smoking or restricted it in some fashion.  Yet with fewer and fewer businesses welcoming smokers, anti-smoking groups insist that children are in danger from secondary smoke and sweeping legislation is needed to “protect” them.

Healthcare - Most smokers do not rely on government programs to heal them should they become sick.  Smokers are no different than non-smokers in that regard.  Many smokers have private health insurance.  Many smokers don’t become sick.  Anti-smoking groups tell us that smokers get sick and die younger than non-smokers.  If this is the case, anti-smoking advocates should be delighted that smokers do not become lingering burdens on our healthcare system or live to collect Social Security from that struggling social program.  If smokers’ taxes should be increased to pay for their older age sicknesses, then so should their social security payments be decreased to recognize their earlier deaths… after all, fair is only fair, even for smokers.

Employees - Hospitality employees especially have never been too concerned with smoking.  For example, one recent study in Ohio showed 124 out of 130 employees surveyed to be against universal hospitality smoking bans.  Most would rather keep their jobs than see their employers put out of business by oppressive anti-smoking laws.  Recent petitions in Louisville Kentucky numbering over 25,000 signatures contained a large number of hospitality employees.

When anti-smoking advocates are confronted with any of the above, they invariably fall back on the bandwagon approach.  The argument is circular and misleading.  Smoking bans are being passed around the country, but many of those bans are being repealed or ignored, mostly by the governments that put them into effect, negative economics being realized after the fact.  Just as important is the fact that bans have only proven popular to anti-smoking advocates.  Citizens that went along with bans in areas where referendums were used have begun to realize that they were duped.  As a result of this oppressive legislation, the local bowling alley is no longer open, nor is Mom’s Diner, mainstays of local interaction.  Instead, corporate-based dining establishments which thrive on customer turnover replace the likes of Mom’s diner, where community identity is dependent upon neighbors gathering and discussing social issues over pie, coffee, and cigarettes.

Anti-smoking advocates do not want citizens to vote on smoking bans. They feel that referendums undermine the Democratic process.  I don’t know of a process that can be more democratic than our citizens voting.  The exception to the nanny’s stance on referendums is when all legislative efforts fail and referendums are all that are left.  At that point, propaganda floods the airways in attempts to sway the public vote, asking such questions as, “Would you support a smoking ban to save the lives of our children?”   The Antis don’t want FAIR votes, but they can control pre-vote propaganda and the result is legislation that is not wanted or needed.

But until such time as all legislative efforts fail and referendums must be used, the smoke nannies hold fast to the idea that we aren’t educated enough to make decisions concerning our own health.  We don’t know how to control ourselves, so it must be done for us.

We need to understand how the smoke nannies work in order to better understand how to stop them.  They always have a dance and a song and the tune they play is one that we have heard before.  Those of us understanding this and pointing it out are branded as “allies of Big Tobacco”, much as messengers of old were shot. 

When activists, fighting against the propaganda of anti-smoking groups, make reference to current campaigns to demonize tobacco and their similarity to the anti-smoking programs of the Nazi regime of the 30's and 40's, anti-smoking groups puff up with ruffled feathers and indignance.  It hurts their feelings that what they do, "for the betterment of mankind", is associated with such an evil empire.

A spade is a spade, and the programs and actions of both the purveyors of oppression in Nazi Germany and the elitist nanny groups of today fit well within the same glove.  It has been shown and accepted in the academic world that anti-smoking groups today have molded their campaigns from the campaigns of the Nazis.  However, one can’t help but wonder if emulating the Nazis is inadvertent – and merely the mindset found in all groups seeking control by advocating oppression.

Terry Gray

President – Forces Kentucky

Neither the author nor Forces Kentucky receives ANY money from Big Tobacco or Pharmaceutical interests.  Forces Kentucky is a chapter of a non-profit corporation and the author is an unpaid activist.

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