Since When Does The Government Have The Power To Protect Us From Ourselves?
In Boston the local health bureaucrats are considering a smoking ban that could well put cigar bars out of business.
Let’s stop and consider that for a minute. Cigar bars are what they are. If you go to one you know what you’re getting. The exist for no other reason than to provide a comfortable atmosphere in which people can enjoy tobacco and alcohol products. Everyone going into the bar knows that it will be filled with tobacco smoke, because that’s the nature of cigar bars. And now the bureaucrats are going to try and put these bars out of business not because the smoking going on there is bothering other people or impacting their health. But because the health bureaucrats want to protect the cigar smokers from themselves.
There is no other possible way to look at this, and isn’t that a little disturbing? A board of unelected bureaucrats essentially taking away the public’s ability to enjoy tobacco in a private establishment that exists expressly for that purpose?
The argument being made by the board is that the cigar smoking jeopardizes the health of the people who work at the cigar bar. They’re calling it a “workplace smoking ban.” But here’s the thing: If they ban cigars in a cigar bar there will be no more workplace. The bar, unless it can stay open as a strictly alcohol retailing establishment, will go out of business and everyone working there will be out of a job.
This ban also seeks to ban the sale of tobacco on college campuses (because our college kids are too dumb to make decisions about smoking for themselves, apparently) and for some bizarre reason drug stores.
All, again, to protect the public from itself.
Now, when it comes to smoking, I’m willing to listen to people who don’t like smoking and don’t want to be confronted by it in public. But when the debate over smoking moves from public spaces like parts and sidewalks and into private establishments we’re starting to talk about prohibition. We’re starting to talk about infringing upon the ability of free citizens to enjoy a perfectly legal product within the confines of their own property.
That’s just not right.
