"I don't smoke. I don't like smoke. I sit in the non-smoking section of restaurants. In fact, I favor a smoking ban on publicly owned property in closely confined areas where non-smokers have no easy escape from tobacco fumes. That said, most smoking bans are pernicious. They represent prying, busybody government at its worst - regulations without any respect for property rights, foisted on the public by anti-tobacco zealots armed with pseudo-science."
- From "Smoking Bans Continue an Assault on Freedom" by Robert A. Levy
Rights. Is there any more misunderstood or abused term in modern day society? Every time you flip on the TV or open up a newspaper, your inundated with "rights." And when it comes to the smoking ban issue, the key word being tossed around by both sides is "rights."
However, there is a fundamental flaw from both perspectives, and that is the fact that people need to understand rights - particularly the rights that this country were founded upon - in order to argue rights. The pro-smoking ban people have no grasp on rights. If they did we wouldn't be having this battle.
One of our most important rights as Americans is our ability to own our own property. It is one of the very pillars that this country was founded upon and one of the factors that originally drove the colonization of this nation.
Whether tangible "real" property or intellectual property, the ability to own something and be free from certain government and social tyranny was important enough to be part of the Declaration of Independence and our own Constitution.
So why are we allowing this basic right to be taken from us by giving de facto control and rights over our own property to government and special interests? After all, that is what smoking bans are. We are giving our property rights over to somebody else and giving them the ability to overrule our own. Does this sound like something that is in-line with the American ideal? It sounds more like cold war-era Eastern Europe to me...