People were warned what would happen if they went after cigarettes. I am a nonsmoker, but I don’t care who smokes. That is what freedom is all about.
There are way too many nanny conservatives here.
In 1995, California was the first state to enact a statewide smoking ban for restaurants. I worked in NYC when the idea to ban smoking in bars and clubs gained steam, and ultimately passed in 2002. It sparked a citywide debate, with the pro-ban people gaining the upper hand. I mean, how can you defeat leftist-based emotional argument of "I won't die of secondhand smoke and my clothes won't smell"?
And there was much rejoicing. Except...what really happened was a sort-of violation of the Takings clause. What all the anti-smokers et al achieved was the sanctioning of the state to tell commercial property owners what can and can't happen on their property, without compensation.
NY has moved beyond bars, clubs, offices, and public places to outdoors. Other municipalities have enacted similar takings, erm, bans. Nobody fights for commercial property rights anymore. Marx and Engels are laughing in hell.
Second-hand smoke is what economists call an externality - an indirect cost or benefit to an uninvolved third party that arises as an effect of another party's (or parties') activity. Guess what else is an externality? Air pollution, specifically exhaust from motor vehicles. The same folks who complain about the smell of smoke are likely driving cars with an internal combustion engine. This may be only one example of an externality, but the whole environmental movement rests on "the need for government to regulate industry to make the air clean." You can draw a straight line from the “ban smoking indoors” movement to Greta Thunberg.
The whole concept of negative externalities, which worked so swimmingly in the anti-smoking crusade, got weaponized in Covid. When the shots that were granted EUAs rolled out, many people refused to take them. We then saw the pro-shot talking heads brandish anti-smoking arguments - remember "The bottom line: We’re going to protect vaccinated workers from unvaccinated co-workers." Regarding masks, we got Mandatory masking? What smoking bans can teach us
Despite well-documented health consequences of indoor smoking, efforts to ban the behavior were met with intense political resistance and an all-too-familiar civil liberties debate, just as we see today. But science, combined with social and political initiatives that were responsive to public concerns, eventually spurred a large-scale shift in public opinion around smoking bans. From this experience, three lessons can inform how to improve adherence to universal masking -- a life-saving public health measure: 1. Frame masking as a workers' rights issue, 2. Mandates are necessary because they work, and 3. Don't lose sight of the last mile.
I don’t smoke, and I also don’t like smelling like a chimney (or nowadays, like a pot dispensary) after a night at a club or restaurant. But liberty isn’t always clean and antiseptic; second-hand smoke is a cost of freedom.
The anti-smoking campaign that gave the government an inroad into whittling away rights under the guise of public health has continue unabated.
I don’t care is anyone smokes. I care if they force me into a position of having to breath their smoke in.