Second-class Smokers
By JUSTIN CROWDER
April 2009
Legislation that would ban smoking in private restaurants and other “public areas” passed in committee in the North Carolina General Assembly last month. Republican Rep. Wil Neumen is quoted as saying that if they do not pass the regulation amidst a growing consensus among locals regarding the harm of second-hand smoke, the General Assembly “would be going against our oath to protect the health, welfare and safety of the people of North Carolina."
Mr. Neuman ought to re-read a principle found in the North Carolina Constitution that states: “A frequent recurrence to fundamental principles is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty.” The fundamental principle left out in all this is that if a free society desires to remain free, it must preserve property rights. And, secondly, the entire premise as regards second-hand smoke is based upon questionable science no matter how the blessed majority feels about it. Therefore, the bill under consideration in the General Assembly ought to be judged too intrusive to be taken seriously by any earnest statesman.
To the first point, the General Assembly is literally debating whether it has the right to tell restaurants whether they can or cannot allow patrons to smoke on their premises. To state the obvious, the people in bars and restaurants were not in any way coerced to walk into the business and sit down and inhale second-hand smoke.
The argument enunciated by Rep. Neumen, that by enacting the law the state would be performing its function as protector of the general welfare, is then rendered mute. The state is not needed to protect people from themselves who can simply choose not to expose themselves to second-hand smoke.
What the bill would do in reality is infringe upon the property rights of the entrepreneurs who own the restaurants and bars. The economic right involved has implications for political liberty. As Milton Friedman put it in “Capitalism and Freedom,” “economic arrangements are important because of their effect on the concentration or dispersion of power.”
Economic liberty is intertwined with political liberty and cannot be ignored because the relation seems abstract. Friedman goes on to explain that “every act of government intervention limits the area of individual freedom directly and threatens the preservation of freedom indirectly.” A bill that allows regulation of a legal activity (smoking) in private businesses is, if it is anything, a threat to freedom: the freedom to smoke, the freedom to peaceably assemble and the freedom to manage one’s property.
If the government can regulate smoking, then it will soon learn that it can regulate speech just as well. Understanding the slippery slope involved, the point of contention involved when the government aspires to intervene in its citizens lives should be founded upon a rock, not shifting sand, so to speak. If you do not want the tan stuff in your shoes, don’t go walking on the smoking-Nazi’s case for their fascism.
The entire argument for the regulation hinges upon the science behind the health risks of second-hand smoke. The science, however, is controversial. A study released in 2003 in the British Medical Journal that compared the lung cancer and heart disease rates in spouses of smokers against spouses of non-smokers found that there is essentially no difference.
Here a parallel can be drawn with the phenomenon of the environmental movement. While the science for global warming, for example, is not universally accepted among scientists, the belief that global warming exists is popular among American citizens.
Thus, politicians, much like Rep. Neuman, leverage populist gimmicks to gain power over people’s lives all under the pretence of protecting the “general welfare.” What, one wonders, would be Neumen’s response if a majority of locals held a consensus concerning the usefulness of our Republican representatives? Perhaps a bill to ban the Republican’s proverbial second-hand smoke (namely idiotic bills opposed to liberty) is in order.
Many things are potentially harmful. For example, this author is currently leaning back precariously in his chair. If he were to fall back he could potentially die. The second-hand harm done would be the emotional and possible physical damage to family and friends. Nevertheless, the government has no place regulating what people do with their chairs. They are their chairs.