Smoking Wars IV

The Elkhart Common Council is once again looking at imposing a citywide smoking ban in most "public" places (never mind that most of the restrictions are on private businesses). At a meeting Monday evening, covered by The Elkhart Truth, passions rose on both sides, including the obligatory witness who had had a relative die from second-hand smoke, and who wanted to make sure no one has to go through the same experience "ever again."

I have news. Someone WILL go through it again. People die, and no amount of lawmaking will change that. It's unfortunate, but we can't leglislate every potential heartache out of our civilization.

Hand in hand with this kind of nonsense is the argument that "if it saves just one life it will have been worth it." Really? I think the loss of freedoms that thousands or more died to preserve is a pretty big price to pay on the chance that a life might be saved, especially when it's impossible to measure this kind of result. We can't possibly know if we saved one life. Whose life? Where? It's an unmeasurable hypothetical outcome that is being used to justify curtailing rights. How stupid. How morally reprehensible. How fascist.

And there's one of the big rubs: the numbers are all so damn iffy. The original ordinance stated that 65,000 people die each year from second hand smoke. Never mind that fact that we kill far more people than this on our highways -- but, how the hell do we KNOW this? I think we don't . Non smokers get lung cancer for a variety of reasons, but I suspect the anti-smoking crowd attributes every one of these deaths to second-hand smoke. Hardly a fair, or honest, analysis.

The problem here is that the issue is largely misdefined. From the standpoint of the council, the issue should not be one of what is an exaggerated public health concern. Nor should it be an issue about smokers' rights and non-smokers' rights (neither exists). Rather, it is a problem of whether or not politically correct hysteria should be allowed to trample property rights. If the council doesn't stop this now, it will find itself dealing with further encroachments in the future. The irrational always try again. Especially if they get their way the first time.