Up in smoke

Originally released for publication May 11, 2005
(c) 2005 by Steve Martaindale
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Austin’s voters added their weight to the anti-smoking steamroller last weekend by passing an ordinance that pretty much makes it illegal to light up in the capital city, including even bars.


These smoking bans sprouting up all over the country have become ridiculous. Perhaps what we really need to do is to outlaw smoking altogether, make it illegal even to possess any tobacco product. After all, it has worked so well in controlling drugs.

First, though, we might want to revisit the history of the eighteenth and twenty-first amendments to our Constitution.

No, instead of the majority forcing its will upon the entire population, there is a marketplace-driven answer to the problems of non-smokers having to deal with cigarette smoke and of smokers having to abide by the wishes of non-smokers.

First of all, let me make my motives clear.

The last time I smoked a cigarette was when a buddy sneaked a pack to an overnight campout in the woods near where we lived. I was 15 years old at the time and decided afterward that I did not want to follow that route.

Once I moved out of a smoke-filled home, my lungs and my senses came to appreciate that decision and the clear air that accompanied it. As workplaces began controlling smoking and restaurants started offering smoke-free dining (both performed under duress, perhaps), I fell in love with the absence of nicotine-laden air.

In spite of that, however, and even after watching the ill effects smoking has had on my parents, I cannot align myself with those who feel they must force their desires on everyone else. I will do whatever I can to talk people out of smoking in the first place or to help them quit, but I will not order them to do so.

“OK,” you ask, “what is it that you think we should do?”

Let the marketplace decide.

FOLLOW THE MONEY

I propose two ordinances, perhaps even statewide laws.

First, every restaurant or bar or dance hall must decide if it wishes to allow smoking or to be smoke-free. There won’t even be any divided areas allowed because non-smokers have too often had to endure invading smoke while in purported non-smoking areas. It’s either a smoking restaurant or a non-smoking restaurant.

Second, every institution must proclaim its smoking status in signage and advertising to keep people from expecting one and encountering the other.

With such simple rules in place, the market will work out the number of businesses that will allow smoking. Similarly, it will provide a choice of smoking and non-smoking workplaces for restaurant employees.

Some bars will go smoke-free and lose smoking customers. However, they will pick up non-smoking customers from the bars that retain smoking privileges.

There will be a period of testing the waters for each business and one establishment that starts catering to smokers might find it needs to change. Successful owners design their businesses to do that. Consider the number of restaurants that have added buffets the past several years.

Some will even build side-by-side-but-separate facilities, one for each preference.

There is no practical reason why this plan would not work, but I’m afraid those who drive such decisions will never see it through the haze. Not the haze of tobacco smoke, mind you, but the clouds of self-importance that make them think they should look after those who cannot look after themselves. That is, those who do not behave and think the same.

No, they will contentedly rock themselves to sleep at night, secure in the thought that they have made life better and safer for their dim-witted neighbors.

They will then awake at 2 a.m. in a cold sweat, worrying about how to force those neighbors to cease eating junk food, to start exercising, to get regular medical checkups, to protect themselves from sunburn, to conserve energy, to protect the ozone, to save the whales ...
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(c) 2005 by Steve Martaindale