Smoking bans trample property rights and have no solid science behind them
re: "Smoke-Free D.C.: Round 2" (Washington Post editorial, 3/19/05)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A50362-2005Mar19.html
To the Editors:
Increased revenue at bars and restaurants since a smoking ban is a good argument against passing a ban. Beyond the fact that restaurants and bars are private property and that customers are not required to go there nor employees to work there, if banning smoking is good for business proprietors will do it without the Nanny State getting involved.
In 2003, the results of the largest second-hand smoke study ever undertaken (Enstrom and Kabat) concluded: “The results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect. The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.”
Smoking is a dirty habit, but in the absence of strong science the government should avoid interfering in the rights of property owners and citizens.
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For more info, see the Heartland Institute's web site about this issue:
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=10594
http://www.heartland.org/Article.cfm?artId=15033
Click here for the full report on the second-hand smoke study
| Print article | This entry was posted by Rossputin on 03/21/05 at 07:45:13 am . Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. |
Yours truly
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03/21/05 @ 11:25:43 pm
The real issue is that people that keep talking about banning smoking on "public" property don't even begin to understand that it's not public, it's private property.
You can't say that these people are willfully trampling on private property rights, because they think a restaurant, a bar, etc is actually "public" property. They don't even understand the objection.