Love the reactions here. "Gestapo." "Smoking police." "Invasion of privacy." The country is moving toward a total ban, and sure, it's going to take a while to get there, but it's going to be fun to watch these guys complain when we ban smoking in their houses.[The ordinance] has delighted some and angered others and prompted complaints about invasion of privacy and even threats to boycott the city, Maine’s second-largest. The ordinance, which takes effect on Jan. 19, allows the police to stop cars if an adult is smoking while a child under 18 is a passenger. The smoker can be fined $50.
“I’ve heard people say it’s the smoke police or the Gestapo,” said Mayor Richard D. Greene, a pack-a-day smoker[.]
This one is my favorite:
Newsflash, folks: You do not have a right to smoke.Gary Nolan, a spokesman for the pro-smoker’s group, The Smoker’s Club, said such bans and court decisions were based on “junk science.”
“At some point these busybodies have to stop,” Mr. Nolan said. “If we can give our rights up to personal property, the nose of the camel is in the tent and there’s no telling how far we can go. I’m telling you the high-fat craze is next.”
You want a right to smoke, write your congressman. See if you can get a constitutional amendment passed. Hell, see if you can get one suggested. I dare you.
A few of the other skirmashes in the war effort:
At least seven states, including several with large numbers of smokers like Texas, Oklahoma and Alaska, prohibit or sharply restrict smoking around foster children in homes, cars or both. Some require homes or cars to be smoke-free for 12 hours before a foster child enters.
Judges determining parental custody and visitation have, in more than a dozen states, ordered a parent not to smoke around a child. An Ohio court last year gave custody of a 6-year-old boy to his father solely because the boy’s mother and her fiancé smoked.
Tenants in apartments have won several recent efforts to get smoke-free buildings or areas, or curtail secondhand smoke from neighboring apartments. In August, after requests from residents in Michigan, First Centrum Communities, which has housing complexes for the elderly in six states, made all its buildings smoke-free. A recent ruling in a New York case said landlords who allow tenants to be exposed to secondhand smoke could be violating obligations to make apartments habitable.
One more quote, from an article I'm clearly enjoying:
Another council member, Susan Hawes, a nonsmoker who is a medical assistant, opposed it. “We have so many people telling us what we can and cannot do in our own lives,” Ms. Hawes said. “Are we going to come back and say, ‘If you don’t get your child out there once a week to exercise ...’ ”
I think it's fascinating that all of the nay-sayers are focusing on possible government meddling with obesity as the next step in their fantasized parade of horribles. The government is attacking one of the ways we're dooming our children to lead shorter, unhealthy lives, they may go after the next major lifestyle killer next. Is that the argument? Are we really saying: "My God! What will we do if our government keeps trying to protect us? And our children?! Next they'll tell us we can't beat them! Or murder them in their sleep! Where have our freedoms gone?!"
It sure would be horrible if the government took a hand in trying to curb our propensity to let smoking parents teach their children to grow up and become smokers, who will teach their children... etc. And it'd be awful if we took an active interest in stemming the horrifying tide of obesity in this country. We've got to nip this thing in the bud!
Oh, and just for the record, there are laws that mandate that kids get a certain amount of exercise a week. They're called truancy laws. You must send your kids to school. Every school has a PE requirement. The government's already involved in this. And smoking is prohibited at school as well.
3 comments:
To be effective, laws must be enforceable. Smoking bans are really non-enforceable, especially in cars or in people's houses or outside on private land.
I mean, how long have we had bans on speeding and smoking marijuana? Those sure work.
I'm of two minds on this. While I agree that there's serious potential for failure on that score (see your own two examples MJ and speeding), my father shared a theory with me once that I think has some merit. He said that cigarettes are unlike almost every kind of addictive drug, in that they don't give the user a euphoric feeling, and that, because of that, there's a real chance to stamp them out. Here's how the argument goes.
We have trouble getting rid of a lot of things. Marijuana, like you mentioned. Other drugs, like Coke and Heroin. Etc. The reason for this is that these drugs have something to offer. They make you feel good. They're worth risking prison for.
The same goes with speeding, on a slightly different level. Instead of being something that gives you something really good, and so is worth taking a big risk (prison), it has such a small risk (200 dollar fine) and provides something moderately good (get there faster, get to drive faster, adrenaline rush, sometimes) that it too is worth it.
Smoking offers none of this. People start smoking because they're young and stupid and it looks cool. They keep smoking because they're addicted. Unlike heroin the addiction goes away after just about a month or two. In other words, if you can't smoke every day, you're not a smoker.
The beauty of a smoking ban is that, though I'm sure we can expect a black market to crop up to meet demand, it might be too late. Let's say we ban smoking tomorrow and it takes a month or two for all the ne'erdowells out there to say "Hey, there's some serious moneymaking potential here..." and set up a black market. By the time we have cigarettes getting smuggled into the country next to bricks of heroin, all the smokers are over the physical addiction hump.
And besides that, smoking isn't worth the social stigma that goes with being an illicit drug user. It's not worth risking jail time over. It's not worth sneaking out to meet a dealer in a back alley and then running home to suck down a couple smokes in the dark of your basement.
It's entirely possible that a smoking ban could work simply because while the addiction is strong, the detox period is short and the activity itself is unpleasant. There's no incentive for going back and getting re-addicted. It isn't like alcohol in the 20's where the problem was never really solved. People wanted to drink. People (most people anyway) don't really want to smoke. Most people want to quit. They just can't. This would make it a lot easier.
They already have speakeasys in Atlanta.
But there really is no need for a naitonwide smoking ban in private homes or cars, or outside. Back in Georgia, the smoking ban went into effect absolutely in places like Atlanta and Athens, not so much in Savannah and points south. Some places split the difference: you can smoke in bars or only after the kitchen in a restaurant has closed down.
In New Orleans, you can have a restaurant (no smoking) a club or bar (smoking permitted) or any other place (no smoking), and it is working out pretty well.
As a smoker, ex-smoker & social smoker, the reward for cigarette smoking is social. Very, very few people chain smoke alone, because of the time commitment necessary to smoke a whole cigarette.
If you have to go outside to smoke, and no one comes with you, there is far less incentive to smoke. Like, an order of magnitude less. Not many people want to hang out by themselves outside work and smoke a cigarette. If you go to a place for lunch, and you can smoke inside, you have one or two smokes before food arrives, and one after. If you have to go outside, you miss the company, and your food.
There is addiction but it is addiction that can be beaten. While it was very difficult to give up the cigarette with the first cup of coffee of the day, and the first bourbon of the evening-smoke, or the after- dinner smoke, giving it up as a daily thing wasn't near as bad once no smoking inside was the rule.
Peer pressure and coolness was the way most folks started smoking. The current here-there ordinances are both enforceable and effective. If you start banning smoking on private property, outside or in cars, it will immediately become very cool to smoke again, people will begin to ignore the laws completely, and go back to smoking inside in places where the laws are flaunted.
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