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Mario on Smoking Ban

January 11, 2006                                       Letter To The Editor:

Lindsay Joseph, a UK student, writes with adoration about the freedom squashing smoking ban in Lexington asking that this oppressive ban remain untouched.

It is sad that a young person seems so willing to allow our local government the ability to disallow private business owners the freedom to make their own business decisions. As a non-smoker who still believes in the disappearing God-given freedom of self-determination, I am appalled. Justice would be served in the future if Joseph were to own a business that government came in to shut down for the “greater good”.

Founder Benjamin Franklin, in 1759, said it best stating, “They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” Or maybe what Franklin said in 1774, “The ordaining of laws in favor of one part of a nation (non-smokers), to the prejudice and oppression of another (smokers), is certainly the most erroneous and mistaken policy.” covers it better.

The fact is that the free market was already taking care of itself before the smoking ban was ever pontificated. Many businesses were already self-established as “smoke free”. Examples are several of the Ramsey’s, and Joe Bolognas to name but a few. Given time to respond to the marketplace rather than the heavy black boot of big brother, Joseph would have had many more smoke free establishments from which to choose. Instead, a very vocal minority of “liberty erasers” made all Lexington businesses the same, or in the words of so many vocal socialists, “set on a level playing field”.

Jeff “Mario” Smith

Lexington, KY

859-433-9694 c

859-271-2460 h

jeffsmith@blueone.net

Responding to: Stay smoke-free http://www.kentucky.com/mld/kentucky/news/editorial/13597594.htm

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