Coastal
Post Online
December,
2003
The Hazards Of A Smoke-Free Environment
The Real Threat is Not Cigarettes But the Unfettered Power of Government
By Robert W. Tracinski
On October 21, New York's smoking ban--one
of the most stringent in the nation-withstood a legal challenge in federal
court, an outcome that will likely embolden anti-smoking activists. But the
bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation--from New
York City to San Antonio-has nothing to do with protecting people from the
supposed threat of "second-hand" smoke. Indeed, the bans themselves
are symptoms of a far more grievous threat, a cancer that has been spreading
for decades and has now metastasized throughout the body politic, spreading
even to the tiniest organs of local government.
This
cancer is the only real hazard involved-the cancer of unlimited government
power.
The issue is not whether second-hand smoke
is a real danger or a phantom menace, as a study published recently in the
British Medical Journal indicates. The issue is: if it were harmful, what would
be the proper reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with
educating people about the potential danger and allowing them to make their own
decisions-or should they seize the power of government and force people to make
the "right" decision?
Supporters of local
tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than attempting to protect people
from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the tobacco bans are the unwanted
intrusion. Loudly billed as measures that only affect "public
places," they have actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars,
nightclubs, shops, and offices--places whose owners are free to set
anti-smoking rules or whose customers are free to go elsewhere if they don't like
the smoke. Some local bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on
others is obviously negligible, such as outdoor public parks.
The decision to smoke, or to avoid "second-hand"
smoke, is a question to be answered by each individual based on his own values
and his own assessment of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free
people make regarding every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest,
whom to befriend or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether
to get married or divorced, and so on. All of these decisions involve risks;
some have demonstrably harmful consequences; most are controversial and invite
disapproval from the neighbors. But the individual must be free to make these
decisions. He must be free, because his life belongs to him-not to his
neighbors-and only his own judgment can guide him through it.
Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack.
Cigarette smokers are a numerical minority, practicing a habit considered
annoying and unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply
commandeered the power of government and used it to dictate their
behavior.
That is why these bans are far more
threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while
waiting for a table at your favorite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders
point in exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke--while they unleash the
systematic and unlimited intrusion of government into our lives.
The tobacco bans are just part of one prong of this assault.
Traditionally, the right has attempted to override the individual's judgment on
spiritual matters: outlawing certain sexual practices, trying to ban sex and
violence in entertainment, discouraging divorce. While the left is nominally
opposed to this trend--denouncing attempts to "legislate morality"
and crusading for the toleration of "alternative lifestyles"--they
seek to override the individual's judgment on material matters: imposing
controls on business and profit-making, regulating advertising and campaign
finance, and now legislating healthy behavior.
But the
difference is only one of emphasis; the underlying premise is still
anti-freedom and anti-individual-judgment. The tobacco bans bulldoze all the
barriers to intrusive regulation, establishing the precedent that the rights of
the individual can be violated whenever the local city council decides that the
"public good" demands it.
Ayn Rand described the
effect of this two-pronged assault on liberty: "The conservatives see man
as a body freely roaming the earth, building sand piles or factories--with an
electronic computer inside his skull, controlled from Washington. The liberals
see man as a soul free-wheeling to the farthest reaches of the universe--but
wearing chains from nose to toes when he crosses the street to buy a loaf of
bread"--or, today, when he crosses the street to buy a cigarette.
It doesn't take a new statistical study to show that such an
attack on freedom is inimical to human life. No crusade to purge our air of any
whiff of tobacco smoke can take precedence over a much more important human
requirement: the need for the unbreached protection of individual rights.
______________________________________________________________________
Robert
W. Tracinski is a senior writer for the Ayn Rand Institute in Irvine, Calif.
The Institute (www.aynrand.org) promotes the philosophy of Ayn Rand, author of
Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.
Copyright © 2003 Ayn Rand
Institute