1.05.2006
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Hack hack cough cough
This is a sound you'll be hearing less of, if you are silly enough to spend any money in bars or restaurants in Washington, D.C. I realize that some people who have disposable income actually live in the confines of the People's Republic of Columbia, but hopefully you've enough to pack up and leave the city to the wolves.
The City Council of DC has now voted, 11-1, to ban smoking in just about anyplace that serves alcohol or food. From the People's Pravda (Washington Post) story, the ban
The serious point is that people should be free to choose their environments. Those who smoke should be able to toss down a shot and a beer, or whatever suits their fancy, with a cigarette or pipe or cigar. If you or I don't like to be in a smoke-filled room, then let the market show the way: if there's enough of us who don't patronize smoky bars, they'll change to stay in business.
Don't get me wrong. Smoking is a nasty business, and is almost certain to cut your life short. In nasty, painful ways like lung cancer. We may have all heard apocryphal stories of someone's Uncle Ned who smoked like a chimney and died in his sleep at 110. But for every Uncle Ned there's dozens if not hundreds of others who die prematurely due to the noxious weed.
Over against the health risks is the notion that we, each of us, should have the freedom to smoke. Or not smoke. If I don't want to inhale your smoke, then I should be free to go to a place where smoking is not allowed. Given that only slightly more than one-fifth of the American population smokes, I suspect that there would be many establishments that ban smoking, or at least offer non-smoking areas.
Given market freedom, that is. If there can be "hookah bars" then why could there not also be "smokers' bars?" The DC way, following in the liberty-constricting way of other cities, is too simply tell us all how to live; another step in the march to the complete nanny state.
It is reasonable to allow bars and restaurants to provide non-smoking areas, if that is what the market will bear. It is unreasonable for any government to tell me that I can't smoke in a bar.
Oh, and for the record: I don't smoke. But I'd want to be able to.
The City Council of DC has now voted, 11-1, to ban smoking in just about anyplace that serves alcohol or food. From the People's Pravda (Washington Post) story, the ban
would apply immediately to all restaurant dining rooms and would be extended to bars, nightclubs, taverns and the bar areas of restaurants in January 2007Oh, there's good news if you're a hookah smoker. Seems there was a tussle over "whether to exempt the city's eight hookah bars." How about opium dens? After all, doesn't one smoke a pipe in those dens?
The serious point is that people should be free to choose their environments. Those who smoke should be able to toss down a shot and a beer, or whatever suits their fancy, with a cigarette or pipe or cigar. If you or I don't like to be in a smoke-filled room, then let the market show the way: if there's enough of us who don't patronize smoky bars, they'll change to stay in business.
Don't get me wrong. Smoking is a nasty business, and is almost certain to cut your life short. In nasty, painful ways like lung cancer. We may have all heard apocryphal stories of someone's Uncle Ned who smoked like a chimney and died in his sleep at 110. But for every Uncle Ned there's dozens if not hundreds of others who die prematurely due to the noxious weed.
Over against the health risks is the notion that we, each of us, should have the freedom to smoke. Or not smoke. If I don't want to inhale your smoke, then I should be free to go to a place where smoking is not allowed. Given that only slightly more than one-fifth of the American population smokes, I suspect that there would be many establishments that ban smoking, or at least offer non-smoking areas.
Given market freedom, that is. If there can be "hookah bars" then why could there not also be "smokers' bars?" The DC way, following in the liberty-constricting way of other cities, is too simply tell us all how to live; another step in the march to the complete nanny state.
It is reasonable to allow bars and restaurants to provide non-smoking areas, if that is what the market will bear. It is unreasonable for any government to tell me that I can't smoke in a bar.
Oh, and for the record: I don't smoke. But I'd want to be able to.
posted by Jack Rich at 10:34 AM
I was born, grew up, and went to school in the Bronx, New York -- on the wrong side of the
tracks. Got the chance to go to college, so instead of joining the NYPD (the obvious career choice at
that time and place), I became an engineer. Spent
some years designing things that go boom (or things that take things that go boom to their destinations...), principally for our military.
Also took an interesting career turn and for some years was in charge of counter-terrorism for my agency...so I learned something about guns. And when to use them.
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