The city of Illinois recently banned smoking in all public places which includes bars apparently. The law is similar to the one passed in California a few years ago. Honestly, all I know is that people can now be fined or arrested for smoking bars and restaurants. I don’t think this was the right decision because it is playing into a frenzy that is continuing to divide people instead of bring them together.
I have heard people describe their reaction to someone near them lighting up as a fury, shouting inside in outrage that anyone could do that. I don’t think this is an uncommon reaction and this upsets me. These kinds of laws are not made to protect people from themselves, but are made on the pretense of public health.
For the sake of this argument, let’s say that smoking causes pollution and really does hurt the people around the smoker as well as the smokers themselves. If this is the case, then shouldn’t it follow that for the sake of public health a law should be passed to protect everyone from second hand smoke? Well, no.
My argument is that it is less safe or equally less safe for someone near you to have a drink of alcohol as it is for them to light a cigarette. I am making a hand waving argument that the number of secondary people injured or killed as a result of drink is higher than the number of people hurt or killed by second hand smoke. This certainly seems to be the case, so shouldn’t people be more furious if someone cracks open a beer than if they light a cigarette?
The reason why I don’t think there should be a ban on smoking is that it does not seem to be a public health law but a law based on aesthetics. All the positive things I’ve heard about the law taking effect sound like the following: I’m happy about it because now I won’t smell like cigarettes after I go out. The aesthetics of smoking are certainly out of fashion, and the frenzy around second hand smoke is a sign of this.
So should there be laws based on aesthetic tastes of the law makers or their constituents? What if their aesthetic tastes sway to other things a bit more sinister in the name of public health or the public good in general?
The reaction to second hand smoke certainly seems irrational when you compare it with a complementary activity such as drinking. Both are potentially dangerous yet one is in vogue and the other is not. By feeding the irrationality around one of them, law makers are helping to create divides between people that don’t need to exist. They are feeding or at least sanctioning the feeling of fury that some non-smokers feel towards smokers. This is because they feel more in danger than they actually are and it goes against their aesthetic sensibility.
There are lots of arguments against the silly science that smoking bans are justified by and usually I’d make one of them here. But the substance of this excellent editorial prompts me instead to share an email that was recently sent to one of my yahoo groups by a Californian transplanted to Minnesota:
========
Hello, I’m new here. Arrived from California earlier this year,
anxious to experience freedom again, and… well, you know what happened.
You guys really have no idea of what you’re in for with this smoking
ban. The worst consequence of these bans is never discussed, because
it can only be experienced.
The CA ban was the most polarizing and segregating event in recent CA
history, and I’ve always felt the ban was the original catalyst for
the self-centered, bitter culture that exists there today, where
people no longer interact with their neighbors. You can’t send 1/3 or
1/4 of the population to the “back of the bus” without serious social
problems arising. That’s the main reason I wanted out of California.
It was so full of hate, and truly violent rhetoric against smokers.
The smoking ban turned everyone into enemies, and now it’s just a
culture where everyone looks out for number one. No sense of
community, no friendliness, no sense of compassion (don’t let media
images and words out of San Francisco fool you).
And now look what the MN State Govt has done. You can kiss your
down-home, “Prairie Home Companion” style of Midwest domestic
tranquility goodbye. Ten, fifteen years tops before Minnesotans know
what life is like surrounded by people, but with no neighbors or
community.
The CA ban led to bans in parks, on the beach, and just about
everywhere else. It’s segregation, which leads to isolated subcultures
rather than citizens interacting with each other normally. It WILL
happen here if nobody stops it.
=======
It’s too bad more people aren’t able to see things like this before they vote bans into being.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Thanks for sharing that Michael. I am a big fan of the English Beat (you may know their song Mirror in the Bathroom); they have a phrase they use often: Love and Unity the Only Way. (In today’s terms probably Tolerance and Community.) I like to ask myself if something is promoting or taking away from Love and Unity and why. Are we treating people like people or are we dividing ourselves and pitting ourselves against each other. The truth is often found in the answer to these questions.
Ten years from now, when cancer rates haven’t dropped and heart attack statistics still remain at a status quo in Illinois, businesses have closed, IL income tax has been raised to 5%, U-hauls cost far more to leave IL than to enter it, and social conflict has increased…do you think someone will realize IL screwed up with its Smoke Free Illinois Act? SHS bans and insulting smokers seem to help little unimportant people to feel powerful and make Antis rich.
Smokers don’t live their lives as islands and many non-smokers who are not irritated by tobacco users are having their life styles affected too. I wonder if smoking bans could also be dubbed the “Social Isolation Acts of America”?
Garnet Dawn
Garnet, i feel you’re comments on the isolating effects of laws such as these are certainly valid. The law puts up walls between people and encourages an undesirable social segregation. The law uses a chainsaw to address a problem where the delicacy of a scalpel is appropriate. Then again this kind of behavior from the government is not new or surprising in the least.
This I Not My Country: September | hell's handmaiden // Aug 31, 2007 at 09:04
[...] Cameron presents Smoking Ban and Aesthetic Fanaticism posted at 1 is A, 2 is B, saying, “Why do smoking bans do more harm than good? Why are [...]