H/T Harley, for Smoking Bans Kill Freedom. It would be unremarkable, except that it’s written by an antismoker.
I’m writing as someone who hates smoking and often walks out of restaurants and bars at the first whiff of smoke.
He sets out his reasons.
The bans are bad policy because they substitute the blunt instrument of regulation in a setting where the market can do just fine at sorting different options for consumers…
The bans eliminate a certain amount of dynamism and economic freedom from cities, and they also lead to a lot of frustration for businesses who have adapted to the current “rules of the game.”
While many people, for example, worry about the second-hand smoke effects on bartenders from serving in smoking restaurants, labor economists have also found bartenders in smoky restaurants are better paid. In other words, they receive a compensating wage differential for taking on the added risks and costs of serving smokers…
Bans also have resulted in some serious unintended, undesirable effects. Back in 2008, economists Scott Adams and Chad Cotti looked at the variation in smoke-free bar laws across the US, and they found an increase in alcohol related traffic fatalities following smoking bans…
Smoking bans contribute to increased fires…
Beyond the unintended consequence discussed above, there’s a more fundamental reason to be against smoking bans: The bans are an attack on freedom, and embracing freedom means tolerating decisions and production we sometimes don’t like. For me, putting freedom first means I have to live in a society where the Kardashians are part of most news broadcasts and where my grocery store is filled with many unhealthy items I’d never buy.
I suppose that what makes this antismoker different from others is that he can see quite clearly that smoking bans are an attack on freedom, and, unusually, freedom is something that matters to him. Because most other antismokers have no interest whatsoever in freedom. In fact, all they ever want to do is take away people’s freedom. They want to change the way people behave, and anyone who wants to do that essentially wants to take away people’s freedom to behave in other ways.
For most antismokers, freedom is a word that has been re-defined to mean freedom from something – as in “smoke-free”. They don’t want people to be free to behave as they like, as in “freedom to choose”.
Anyway, it’s quite refreshing to find an antismoker speaking up against smoking bans. Plenty of non-smokers don’t like smoking bans either, and say so. But most of them aren’t much bothered by tobacco smoke anyway.
All the same, I still wouldn’t want to ever meet or get to know an antismoker like this. I simply don’t want to know people who either don’t like the smell of tobacco smoke (What else won’t they like? The awful stink of frying bacon?), or who believe that tobacco smoke is toxic because some ‘expert’ has told them so (I’m sick of people who believe everything ‘experts’ tell them, and who discount common sense and their own personal experience).
Frank Davis 
Not on what you wrote but still I think you’ll find it interesting.I know I did. Need more like him IMO.
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/3650/hatred-of-smokers-behind-eu-ban-on-menthol-cigarettes
Anytime they talk banning menthols they mean hatred against minorities as they smoke 90% of that blend! Its that reason the FDA hasnt yet banned them in America yet.
Hows that smoking ban in Tasmania working out for them!
Hobart council targets smoking ban breaches
Posted 4 hours 41 minutes ago
Map: Hobart 7000
The Hobart City Council has threatened to clamp down on licensed venues that ignore its smoking ban.
In August 2011 the council banned smoking in all outdoor dining and drinking areas on council managed land.
A report to council prompted by Greens alderman Helen Burnet has found five venues in the inner city area and waterfront have breached the rules by not putting up “no smoking” signs in outdoor dining and drinking areas.
Alderman Burnet says the venues have received verbal and written warnings and their occupation licenses could be suspended if they do not act.
“It’s two week suspension if they don’t comply and then after that there’ll be a two month suspension,” she said.
Since November last year inspections on the most popular venues have been done weekly.
Topics: local-government, health, hobart-7000
More stories from Tasmania
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-06-28/hobart-council-targets-smoking-breaches/4786600?section=tas
This may merit the headline “stop me before I kill again” but since the author of that article included his email address, I sent him the following message to which I expect no answer:
I truly appreciate your recognizing that this is a freedom issue and a live-and-let-live issue since so few do as this ban wagon rolls on.
So I ask this, not snarkily but out of genuine curiosity: You say you not only “hate smoking” but “walk out of restaurants and bars at the first whiff of smoke.” which makes me wonder if you also walk out of restaurants with open grills, if you back off from campfires and wood-burning fireplaces, cross the street when you see a vendor with those chestnuts roasting on an open fire, in fact, refuse to sit at a table with burning candles (because chemically and otherwise it’s all the same stuff) and if you implicitly “hate” grilling, camping, chestnut roasting, candle-burning and fireplace owning.
I ask because I wonder if your (presumably selective) aversion to cigarette smoke isn’t a learned response to a barrage of propaganda and the general impression that it’s what “nice” people do. I ask, because, a mid-20th C national survey of Americans showed the vast majority of nonsmokers actively liked the smell of smoke and liked to be near smokers (citation on demand) and I can’t otherwise account for the sudden change.
Sincerely (and I am)
From Bayer & Stuber
“…..In the last half century the cigarette has been transformed. The fragrant has become foul. . . . An emblem of attraction has become repulsive. A mark of sociability has become deviant. A public behavior is now virtually private. Not only has the meaning of the cigarette been transformed but even more the meaning of the smoker [who] has become a pariah . . . the object of scorn and hostility.”
http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/full/10.2105/AJPH.2005.071886
This change from fragrant to foul has not come from the smoke which has remained a constant. The shift is an entirely psychological one. Unfortunately, the way the shift is manufactured is through negative conditioning. The constant play on fear and hatred through inflammatory propaganda warps perception. Ambient tobacco smoke was essentially a background phenomenon. Now exposure to tobacco smoke (SHS) has been fraudulently manufactured into something on a par with a bio-weapon like, say, sarin gas. There are now quite a few who screech that they “can’t stand” the “stench” of smoke, or the smoke is “overwhelming”; there are now those, hand cupped over mouth, that attempt to avoid even a whiff of dilute remnants of smoke – even outdoors. There are those that claim that, arriving from a night out, they had to put all of their clothes in the washing machine and scrape the “smoke” off their skin in the shower. There are even those that claim they are “allergic” to tobacco smoke. Yet there are no allergens (proteins) in tobacco smoke to be allergic to. And it didn’t stop with just the smoke. Cigarette butts – heretofore unheard of – suddenly became a “monumental problem” too. These are all recent phenomena born of toxic propaganda; it is an expanding hysteria. It says nothing about the physical properties/propensities of tobacco smoke. These people are demonstrating that they have been successfully conditioned (brainwashed) into aversion. They are now suffering mental dysfunction such as anxiety disorder, hypochondria, or somatization. Typical symptoms of anxiety disorder are heart palpitations, chest tightness, shortness of breath, headache, dizziness, etc. These capnophobics (smokephobics) are no different to those irrationally attempting to avoid cracks in the pavement lest their mental world come crashing down. Questionable social engineering requires putting many into mental disorder to advance the ideological/financial agenda. It is the fanatics/zealots/extremists and their toxic mentality and propaganda that have long been in need of urgent scrutiny.
‘I ask because I wonder if your (presumably selective) aversion to cigarette smoke isn’t a learned response to a barrage of propaganda and the general impression that it’s what “nice” people do. I ask, because, a mid-20th C national survey of Americans showed the vast majority of nonsmokers actively liked the smell of smoke and liked to be near smokers (citation on demand) and I can’t otherwise account for the sudden change.’
Good question Walt. Not totally unlike why most Germans saw no reason to persecute Jews until they were trained to. There is one crucial difference however, the general public couldn’t really give a damn about smoking bans, don’t ‘hate’ smoking/smokers and have seen no reason to believe smokers’ loss of freedom would impact on them. Not until now that is (for some at least). Classic slippery slope syndrome – this anti has only spoken out because his freedom is being threatened.
Some useful information.
For anyone who missed the post (at end of last thread), particularly from the UK, Imperial Tobacco has provided a One-stop-shop guide to smoking friendly places in the UK:
http://www.smoke-spots.co.uk/search
Frank
Russian meteor shockwave circled globe twice
“The shock wave from an asteroid that burned up over Russia in February was so powerful that it travelled twice around the globe, scientists say.
They used a system of sensors set up to detect evidence of nuclear tests and said it was the most powerful event ever recorded by the network.”
“Alexis Le Pichon, from the Atomic Energy Commission in France and colleagues report that the explosive energy of the impact was equivalent to 460 kilotonnes of TNT. This makes it the most energetic event reported since the 1908 Tunguska meteor in Siberia.”
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-23066055
That is it. The Bunker is getting built deeper………………
: )
Spiked reports that the American Medical Association has voted to call obesity a ‘disease’, on the grounds that some obese people get heart problems and diabetes, allegedly from being obese. There’s so much wrong with this it’s hard to know where to start, but I think it’s equivalent to calling marathon-running a disease on the grounds that some runners get crumbly hips and knees allegedly from the wear and tear that running causes.
Margo the AMA has lost over 60% of its members because of politically based ideas just like this!
Not sure how this one got by the anti smoking police – Smoking saved my life http://www.swindonadvertiser.co.uk/news/10513827.Retirement___s_a_model_life_for_war_veteran/
Flash Flash Mormon Gay Marriage Advocates demand Polygamy Rights!
Salt lake City runs short of condoms as Polygamist Gays march thru the streets……..
Details Developing
Dear Mr Davis
A timely reminder that Monday is the 6th anniversary of the infamy that is the smoking ban – and is ordained as National Smoking Day.
I shall light up one of my three a year.
DP
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