Cigarette smoke is a nuisance to some people.  And there are people who allege health effects from secondhand smoke.  However, this retardedly huge study, which was conducted over 38 years suggests otherwise.  Basically it found no “causal relationship between exposure to [passive smoke] and tobacco-related mortality,” adding, however “a small effect” can’t be ruled out.  So basically, breathing your spouse’s bad breath for the same amount of time would probably have the same effect.   

But this isn’t the point I was going to make regarding today’s smoking regulations and the people who drive the cause–The Cigarette Gestapo or TCG.  It is a basic matter of respect for civil liberties and private property rights.   

My wife tells me all the time how she loves the recent bans on smoking in bar and restaurants around the KC Metro.  Lee’s Summit has had one for quite sometime.  Independence passed one as well and most recently, Kansas City, MO.  While I must admit, it is very nice walking into a bar and actually seeing the other side of it.  It is also nice walking out of one and not being reminded you were JUST in one.  But neither of these examples justifies the forced ban these cities are imposing. 

Even the most hate-filled antismoker probably wouldn’t demand laws outlawing smoking within one’s own home or SUV.  They might buy the argument that since homes and SUV’s are private property, an individual has the right to decide how these things will be used.  But that points to a real inconsistency of TCG who is supposedly concerned for health.  Cigarette smoke in a house produces secondhand smoke just as it does in an office, grocery store, airplane, in a boat, or on a float!  Therefore, if the health is truly the concern of TCG, then they ought to demand laws banning smoking even in private homes or private property. 

Now you might say “If I don’t like secondhand smoke then I don’t have to visit your house.”  And you would be dead balls on.  But TCG and their following of sheep better not make the same argument.  Otherwise the health argument becomes hypocritical and their agenda to outlaw tobacco becomes exposed. 

Just like a home, bars and restaurants are also private property.  The owner has a right, in our free society, to decide whether smoking is allowed.  They are only responsible to inform the customers such as a sign reading Smoking Allowed or Smoking Prohibited.  Then the people can decide accordingly. 

I know people are going to say “But I am a nonsmoker.  If there were no laws against smoking, I would have no choice.”  This is a ridiculous argument.  There are roughly 40 million smokers, leaving well over 200 million American nonsmokers.  To tell me that businesses—any business—have no interest in catering to these 200 plus million is ignorant to say the least.   

Business executives are spineless in many respects.  Bar and restaurant owners fear the power of TCG, but they also fear losing smoking customers to their competition if they individually banned smoking in their own establishments.  There really can’t be a “Gentlemen’s agreement” to ban smoking within their industry.  These never last, trust me.  So they go and seek or cow-tow to local government regulations. 

Liberty minded people should find all of this scary.  Because smoking is viewed as a disgusting habit, it is ok to ban.  The future is always an easy thing to say something won’t happen because is hasn’t happened yet.  I should remind you it was decent, well-meaning Germans who helped create an all powerful government but instead were building the “Trojan Horse” for Hitler.  At the time, that wasn’t the future.  But it DID happen.