Okay, so here’s an AP abstract of smoking bans the N.C. General Assembly is currently considering:
The Senate tentatively approved legislation to curb smoking further on state property, even inside state-owned or leased cars. One bill would bar people from smoking within 25 feet of entrances to state buildings on state-owned or leased property. The buffer also would surround ventilation systems and open windows to those buildings. The bill passed after an amendment approved reduced the buffer from 50 feet. Another proposal given the initial OK would prohibit smoking in all state-owned or leased vehicles. Final Senate votes could come Tuesday.
So should we free-market (freedom) fundamentalists work themselves into a tizzy over this? No, actually. Not this one, at least. You see, while bans in PUBLIC spaces may be part of an incrementalist plot to ban smoking everywhere in N.C. eventually, from the POV of property rights, it’s not that offensive to me. You see, public property is in some sense common property. The same cannot be said for a privately owned bar or restaurant. So even if we were to ban smoking on the street, which is a public thoroughfare, that would make more sense than banning it in someone’s business establishment, which people can choose either to patronize or not (and thus bear, or not, the associated risks of 2nd hand smoke, etc. etc.).
When someone blows smoke into my face on the public street, then makes me pay taxes to have government employees come ’round and tidy up the streets of cigarette butts, well that’s the imposition of both a cost and a harm onto me. So, public sector smoking bans are probably right, albeit for the wrong reasons (paternalism, nanny statism, public health fixations, and so on). That said, I’m not going to get bent out of shape seeing that smoking is banned on the sidewalk. Instead, I’m going to put my energy into fighting for people who’re trying to run an honest business that includes an environment of which smoking may be a part. That is their right.
-Max Borders
But what this does, Max, is take private individuals engaging in a legal behavior and segregates them from the rest of society. In essence, making them outcasts and/or second class citizens just because they choose to smoke.
Regulating the place where people can or cannot smoke does nothing to reduce the number of people smoking or improve public health. It’s just another way for government to control our lives.
I am sympathetic to policies that lower the cost I incur as a member of the collective. However, I don’t think this is a result of prohibitions. While the cost the individuals incur as a result of street cleaning (and second-hand smoke) may decrease after this legislation is passed, the collective will incur increased costs in the forms of judicial and public safety expenses that will result from the enforcement of this prohibition.
FYI, I am not advocating these bans, I’m just saying I’m not going to get bent out of shape over this… My point was to emphasize the public/private distinction.
Now, is there a significant cost to prohibitions on pooing and peeing in the street? Of dog-poo bans? Of other measures to keep cleanliness and order in the public thoroughfares?
If we took a hard libertarian line on these bans, we’d have to drag people into court for smoke-in-the-face offenses. Not sure that would lower any costs. I also realize that we could enforce littering bans more strictly — which would be better than a ban. But let me repeat, such bans aren’t nonsensical. They make some sense, notwithstanding some of the objections you guys raise–including your slippery slope arguments.
The question for me is: how intact is personal (non-coercive) freedom and private property rights once any such ban goes into force?
If the point of smoking bans is to improve public health and reduce smoking, this does neither.
If the point of smoking bans is to further regulate every aspect of our lives, then this ban is successful.
Couldn’t there be other reasons for such bans? I’m not saying they’re all that strong, rather that there are other reasons. Seems you’ve created a false dichotomy here.
What about the public agency that is located in a private shopping center? It will now be illegal to walk by the front door of that agency doing a perfectly legal act, smoking a cigarette, on private property on the way to the tobacco store next door.