Public Smoking Ban

For non-New Yorkers out there, back in late March NY State passed legislation that would ban smoking in all public places effective in July. At first glance this bill is great. I personally hate coming out of a restaurant’s non-smoking section wreaking of stale smoke because one person in the place had to light up. Like two-thirds of New York’s population, I’m a non-smoker, but am conscientious about smokers’ rights because in the past I’ve had friends who smoked.

But then I started thinking about the rights of the establishment owner – the person who has dumped their life’s savings into buying and keeping up their restaurant / bar / company. Under this new legislation, the government is essentially coming in and telling them how to treat their own customers and/or employees. In many cases, they may actually lose business over this new bill.

I did a search based on some of the key phrases outlined in my ideas above, and I found this article from the Ayn Rand Institute’s website. Worth a read if you are interested in my ideas presented above, along with a good hearty spoonful of Ayn Rand objectivism.

So after discussing the matter with several different friends who have different perspectives and opinions on the matter (some of them smokers, some non-smokers), here is a brief list of myths/facts that I came up with in the month leading up to the actual enactment of the new law. In a few months we’ll see how right this list is!

Myth: When restaurants and bars become all non-smoking, more non-smokers will patronize them and thus these establishments will benefit from increased business.
Fact: I believe that no additional non-smokers will be going out to eat more often than they already do. In terms of bars, most smokers I know directly associate drinking and smoking, and they told me that they may actually go to bars and clubs much less frequently in favor of private parties. A lot of owners are really worried about losing business, not to mention upset about how much money some of them have already invested in smoke ventilation systems to meet existing local laws.

Myth: Making all establishments non-smoking places them on a level playing field.
Fact: This law takes away the right of the establishment-owner to choose for themselves whether or not to operate a smoking or non-smoking business. In the early 1990′s, the McDonald’s franchise ruled that all of its restaurants worldwide would be entirely non-smoking. There are hundreds of other chains that could do the same thing but haven’t, probably because they would lose business. McDonald’s probably even lost some business, nothing noticeable of course. However, there is nothing to say that if Applebee’s banned smoking in it’s franchise they would lose business at the same small rate that McDonald’s did. The point is that there may not be any parity in this situation for these establishments. The level playing field may not actually exist, otherwise I believe these places would have already made themselves non-smoking gradually over the past 10-15 years.

Myth: Secondhand smoke is a leading cause of lung cancer among non-smokers, and by stamping out smoking in public places we are eliminating that threat.
Fact: According to the Environmental Protection Agency’s website on the matter, children are most susceptible to the health risks associated with secondhand smoke. In my opinion, if a child is hanging out in a smoky restaurant or bar enough to be drastically affected by the secondhand smoke, then the State of New York should be doing something to deal with the fact that the child isn’t at home studying or in school taking advantage of this State’s fine education system. While I think smelling like smoke after being in a smoky bar or restaurant is disgusting, I seriously doubt that small exposure as a customer to secondhand smoke is enough to cause any sort of cancer.

The real people that this bill is designed to protect (and the people not mentioned at all in the press or any of the anti-smoking propaganda) are the employees of these establishments. But it’s interesting that if secondhand smoke were really such a problem, why isn’t at lest some money from the American Lung Association, all of these anti-tobacco companies, all of the people suing the tobacco companies, and all of the taxes that poor smokers pay for each pack of cigarettes (now over $1.75 in tax per pack here in NY) going to better educate people about the long-term effects of secondhand smoke? There have been millions of dollars spent worldwide per year in AIDS education, but I’ve personally only seen two infomercials here in the US regarding secondhand smoke (one with the old guy whose wife died because he smoked, and the one about the waitress in the smoky cafe), and I haven’t seen those on TV in over a year. Instead of oppressing those who already smoke, why not educate the public about the benefits and in the ways of quitting? And why not subsidize the price of smoking cessation products (last time I checked at Wal-Mart, the price of a box of nicotine patches was $40 for a week’s supply!).

Further, what if forcing smokers to stay at home instead of eating out or smoking more while at work just exposes their kids to additional secondhand smoke? I truly believe a lot of smokers want to quit (most of the smokers I know have tried to quit at least half a dozen times). It either comes down to lack of motivation or lack of knowledge as to how to quit successfully.

Myth: When smokers need a cigarette, they can just retire to the great outdoors and have one.
Fact: While that may work in California, and even in New York during the summer months when this bill is first enacted, the rest of the year New York might as well be located above the arctic circle (especially after last winter!). We could go on about frostbite and such, but I think you see my point here. Plus, having to walk through a huge plume of smoke to get into a restaurant doesn’t really solve any problems, especially when it drifts in the door anyway. And if you move it across the street, then it becomes somebody else’s problem (but it’s still a problem – nothing solved!).

So What’s Next?

Honestly, I think everything in life occurs in a pendular motion. We are doing everything we can about smoking short of banning the sale of cigarettes. Banning the sale of alcohol during prohibition only proved that if you push people too far, they will fight back to protect their rights. I believe that the same is true of people that have chosen to smoke (or worse yet, who are addicted to nicotine, a drug whose withdrawal symptoms are similar to those of heroin). If the government and anti-smoking lobbying groups continue to campaign for higher taxes and more laws like this one in New York state that prohibit smoking in public places, it’s very likely that soon enough the sale of tobacco products all together could become so prohibitively expensive that there would be a similar backlash. There are already Indian reservation and Canadian border runners who sell untaxed cigarettes on the streets of New York City.

In the end, we have to ask whose agenda are laws like this trying to push, who are they trying to protect, and how effective have they been in doing it? It would seem that their efforts, although politically popular, have been largely ineffective. The number of smokers has continued to increase in most states over the past five years (this chart showing “occasional” smokers) despite higher taxes and tougher public smoking laws. These occasional smokers are the ones who only smoke “when they go out” to bars and restaurants with friends and are essentially generating some of the secondhand smoke that these new laws are targeting. Maybe it’s time to try something different? Maybe it’s time to try a less militant approach, and educate people on the effects of smoking and how secondhand smoke can affect children and those around them. This large scale education effort would be highly similar to the campaign that Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and other organizations lead every year to educate young drivers about how their intoxication can affect their ability to drive, and how their drunken driving can kill others on the road.

And in the end we come back to the restaurant and bar owner stuck in the middle of the debate. They can’t make their own establishment non-smoking because they might lose customers, but having a law that removes their right to choose is also unacceptable because they might also lose customers that way, and they would have lost the choice. In the end they should be able to and must decide for themselves. Perhaps with the right education, they would join the anti-smoking camp upon their own free will and make their establishment non-smoking. Perhaps instead of shoving it down the throats of the people, the anti-smoking groups should give them the tools to make an informed decision.