Joey’s Thursday Evening Ban Rant

The City of Santa Monica has proposed a city ordinance that would ban smoking in multi-unit dwellings, and I find this development very interesting.

Personally, I would say that bans in apartment buildings and condos make a lot more sense than smoking bans in restaurants and bars.  You can choose which establishments you will frequent to avoid smoke, but you can’t exactly escape from the ‘deadly horrors’ of secondhand smoke when it’s occasionally coming through your air ducts. 

So why didn’t the anti-smoking crusaders attempt to ban smoking in multi-unit dwellings before forcing private business owners to not allow the use of a legal substance in their establishments?  If a person has no choice as to whether or not they are exposed to secondhand smoke in their private residence, and yet they do have a choice in which establishments they frequent on their evenings out, why wasn’t the multi-unit ban their first move?

There are paradoxes aplenty in the anti-smoking world, and this is why I choose to stand on the sound, tried-and-true principles of property rights, individual freedoms, and the legal assumption of risk (if there is indeed a risk present, which I’ll get into in a moment). 

If an individual has a choice as to whether or not they will be exposed to cigarette smoke, and if a tavern owner wishes to allow smoking (again, a legal product) in his or her establishment, I absolutely cannot see where smoking bans in places of business are necessary–or even welcome–in a free society.

As for multi-unit dwellings and the idea that people cannot escape the ‘dangers’ secondhand smoke, my partner Ryan can prove that secondhand smoke’s risks are grossly exaggerated, and many of those so-called ‘risks’ are nothing but a stab in the dark at faulty data.  If secondhand smoke were truly dangerous to these apartment-dwellers, a multi-unit dwelling ban would make perfect sense, and I would concede that point.  But this isn’t the case, as Ryan will soon expose in a report he has written.  (Stay tuned.)

What it all comes down to is that if you repeat a lie often enough, soon people will believe it.  It isn’t difficult for non-smokers to believe that secondhand smoke is harmful, because they want to believe that it’s harmful.  It’s an annoyance.  If you’re a non-smoker, I’m sure you would agree with that statement, and I wouldn’t blame you at all.  I’ve been a non-smoker on-and-off throughout my life, and I can relate.

However, a much greater ‘annoyance’ is headed at us like a freight train; the loss of our property rights and freedom to choose. 

I’m certain that any non-smoker reading this is sympathetic (if even just a little bit) to the anti-smoking crusaders, and again, I understand.  But you cannot brush aside an individual’s property rights, and yet another individual’s right to choose, on account of your preferences.  If you do, you’ll soon find that the same rights that were brushed aside for the small business owners, smokers, and apartment-dwellers will soon become your rights that are being violated.

Living in a free country means that we are also free to be annoyed.  It means that we will disagree with and be disgusted by a lot of things that people do in their places of business and in their own private homes.  My rights end where yours begin, and vice-versa. 

We must respect individual liberty and property rights if we are to remain free.  Show me a person who is willing to give theirs up for a little temporary comfort, and I’ll show you a person who does not understand how they came to be a free in the first place.