THE CASE AGAINST SMOKING BANS

(THE ABRIDGED-- BELIEVE IT OR NOT-- VERSION)

c. Stewart, NYC CLASH, 2003


TABLE OF CONTENTS


INTRODUCTION

The War on Smokers
The Anti-Smoking Movement


 
PROHIBITIONIST TACTICS

"Quick and Dirty," 
says Elizabeth Whelan

"Attack the Messenger," 
says Stanton Glantz

Toss the Jargon
(everyone says it)


 
THE THEORETICAL (EPIDEMIOLOGICAL) SCIENCE

The EPA Report: 
Lung cancer and Secondhand Smoke


 
"HOW TO READ A STUDY" 
(Understanding the Jargon)

 
Heart Disease
and 
Secondhand Smoke
(53,000 "Deaths")

 
THE REAL WORLD SCIENCE

THE AIR 
ACCORDING TO OSHA

Cigarette constituents 
in the air (OSHA standards)

Table 1: 
constituents, charted

Anti-Smokers sue OSHA...
and say "Never mind."


 
RESTAURANT WORKERS AND RESTAURANT AIR

What else is in 
restaurant air.

"Cooking the Books," a restaurant study

Bartenders' "exposure"

Cotinine as a measure 
(of what?)


 
VENTILATION

For it: The facts

Against it: The Prohibitionists


 
CONCLUSION

 
APPENDIX

PROHIBITION'S POLITICS
AND 
PERSONALITIES IN NYC

 
 

CONCLUSION


We have not made the civil liberties argument. Mostly because it seems so...self-evident.

The right to pursue happiness is not--or shouldn't be--the right of one group to wrathfully pursue the happiness of others, and try to run it out of town.

Rights, in fact, aren't--or shouldn't be-- a zero-sum game, in which, for one group to have rights, another is made to have none.

The Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research did a study in 1995 (undoubtedly showing all the usual flaws of a "study") but it seemed to indicate that 47% of smokers said they avoid smoke-free restaurants, and 59% say they actively seek restaurants that allow it. About 35% of nonsmokers said they avoid restaurants with smoking.

Christopher Hitchens concludes thus:

"If this means what it appears to mean, then the astonishing conclusion is that grown-up New Yorkers make decisions...based on their own preferences. Well, what do you know?  Two further conclusions seem permissible: humanity is not divided into "smokers" and "nonsmokers" except in the personal ads for the love-lorn.  And the United States is not some hellish kibbutz where there's just one communal dining area, which serves only comfort food.

"If this is the real state of the case, then Mr. Vallone (1) can take all of the pseudo-research on "secondhand" smoking and cram it into his pipe. The person who smells cigarette smoke and wrinkles his nose before batting the air like a loon is now in the same position as the Peeping Tom neighbor who climbs precariously atop the fridge, binoculars clutched in leprous palm, in order to report the vile bedroom antics of the couple next door.  You have to go out of your way to be offended.  Never doubt that there are such people; never give them an inch either if you value privacy or diversity." 

-"We Know Best," Vanity Fair, May 2001; (1) Then-speaker of the New York City Council
 

As Mencken (who once defined "Puritanism" as "the terrible, haunting fear that somebody, somewhere might be having fun") was to Prohibition, Hitchens is to Anti-Smoking.

Which gets us, full circle, to Prohibition and the Temperance Movement. They, too, had all the "science." The proof-positive that even the most temperate drinking could fell strong men; they even actually had a theory about secondhand booze-- that the exhalations of a drinker could poison those in his path.

This Movement is equal folly.  Equally zealous.  Equally insatiable.  Equally wrong.  And equally antithetical to the notion of civil liberties.

The First Amendment's right to peaceably assemble. The Fourteenth Amendment's right to not have one's ordinary privileges "abridged." The right to private property (from the business owner's perspective) and the plain American right to be treated equally, not made into a "social outcast" or a Second Class citizen by the state.

Even blacks, under Jim Crow, were allowed to have a ghetto. But this Movement is so absolute, it doesn't even allow for ghettos.

Not that long ago, in this very city, another (officially despised) group was also forbidden to assemble peaceably, even in its own ghettoized public places. The result of that was The Stonewall Riots.  And this is the same thing.

If there were one place left--let's posit on top of an Alp--that had a smoker's restaurant with an all-smoking staff... will anyone take the bet that Mssrs  Cherner and Glantz wouldn't attempt to close it down?. On the grounds of protecting the lichen?

We hope, if nothing else, that we've managed to open your minds to the notion that there is another side to this story.

We'll be happy to answer questions, and delighted to talk to you further.
 
 
 

c. Stewart, NYC CLASH, 2002