It seems that every time I open a newspaper or bring up a Web site I read about some new assault on our liberty.
Be it the recent court decision in New Orleans to allow police to search your house without a warrant, which is perhaps the most egregious assault on the rights of the citizens of Louisiana since General Butler held sway in New Orleans, to the recent lunacy at the metro council with regards to the under 21 bar ban, there is always some plot afoot to take away our rights.
I have written about smoking often enough to where those who mistakenly read my column while looking for the sex column know my opinion on it.
To reiterate, I oppose any attempt to ban it or force it underground, a position I would hold whether or not I smoked.
As it is, I see the anti-smoking crusade, coming from the twin evils of government agencies and the health police, to be the product of messianic busybodies whose sole goal in life is to give their post-Christian puritanical sensibilities a target to destroy.
By the time you read this column, Ireland will be beginning its first day with a New York-style smoking ban.
While public health advocates, as if there were folks who advocated ill health (Hunter S. Thompson excluded), will likely crow that the air will be cleaner, I’d suggest that they do it more than fifty feet from the pub, otherwise they’d be in danger of getting glassed by the first irate customer who has lost his seat after getting up to go outside for a smoke.
It’s funny, but with the exception of drinking, more ink has been spilled railing at the evils of “demon tobacco” than any other product.
I remember during the height of the state lawsuits against the tobacco industry that for one to defend smokers or smoking it was seen by the loudest brayers as the moral equivalent of pederasty, anti-Semitism and David Letterman’s less-than-spellbinding hosting of the Academy Awards.
And much woe to you if you were to mention that the jury was still out on how bad second hand smoke is, I believe there would have been riots.
I suppose the biggest question to ask the campaigners for smoking bans is, “Why?”
Usually there are two answers, both of them equally asinine.
The first will be some rot about protecting the health and safety of non-smoking bar workers.
The fact that a large plurality, if not a majority, of bar workers smoke is easily ignored, as is the fact that if someone is truly bothered by the thought of developing cancer due to working in a smoking area then they should quit.
I would like to remind the anti-smoking campaigners that, to paraphrase Lee Strasberg in the Godfather Part II, that this is the life that they have chosen.
The second is the idea that smokers need to be protected from themselves.
This is the same snide doctrine behind all the bans.
It is a notion that people aren’t smart enough to make their own decisions without a whip to their back or a gun pointed at their front.
We all know the health dangers of smoking (and have for almost 40 years).
People who choose to smoke do so for a variety of reasons: stress reduction, socialization, taste, etc.
Allowing people to enjoy an activity which one doesn’t participate in is one of the hallmarks of a tolerant and modern society.
Smoking bans and restricting the rights of consenting adults serves neither society nor increases liberty.
Instead the anti-tobacco lobby has merely created anger, panic and dissension in the places, bars and restaurants where people go to get away from that.
Let the property owners decide.