things kevin hates

I hate smoking with a passion. It disgusts me tremendously. I don’t like the smell, I don’t like seeing other people harm their own health, I don’t like anything about it. If you smoke, you should quit right now. I especially hate it when I meet an attractive young woman and then see her light up a cigarette. So unappealing.

That being said, I’m also not a fan of the smoking bans that have been sweeping the country. Sure, smoking should be outlawed in government buildings, schools, and the like.* But restaurants, bars, casinos, or any other type of business? No way.

Why should a business owner be forced to ban smoking? It should be his or her choice. If people prefer businesses that allow smoking, they’ll go there. If they prefer ones that don’t allow it, they’ll go to those places instead. Some people have pointed to cities that have enacted smoking bans in restaurants and bars and seen revenues go up at those establishments, using this as an argument for more smoking bans. First of all, increased revenue isn’t a reason to force something on people. If it increases revenue, business owners should do it anyway for their own sake**; and if they have philosophical objections to the ban, why should greater revenues (for them or for the state) take precedence over their own beliefs? Second, if revenues at restaurants go up after a smoking ban, that money didn’t appear out of nowhere. It was being spent somewhere else before that, so other businesses are being damaged.*** In any case, there are also studies which show that some businesses have been harmed by smoking bans. To be honest, I really don’t care whether smoking bans hurt or harm business, because money is going to be spent either way. My objection is philosophical, not practical: the state should get its nose out of people’s business. If a person wants to smoke, they should be allowed to, and if business owners want to let people smoke, they should be allowed to as well.

The most frequently cited argument I see for smoking bans in workplaces is for the benefit of the employees, that they have a so-called “right” to a smoke-free workplace. The complete and utter perversion of the concept of “rights” in modern-day politics pisses me off. You don’t have a right to work anywhere if you can’t put up with the conditions of that workplace. If, say, restaurant staffers hated smoking that much, they just wouldn’t work for restaurants that allow smoking, and the owners would either have to pay much higher wages, or they’d go out of business because they’d have no workers.****

On a purely selfish level, I love smoking bans. I don’t smoke, and I don’t like the smell of it, so why wouldn’t I? On my recent NYC trip, I loved the fact that I could go to a bar for a football game and not leave smelling like smoke. The way the stench gets into your clothes and your hair when you’ve been at a bar for a few hours is simply repulsive. On the other hand, prior to the ban on smoking in restaurants, it was extremely rare for me to be bothered by secondhand smoke—virtually all restaurants were large enough and divided enough that the smoking section didn’t pollute the non-smoking section. But like I said, on a personal level, smoking bans don’t bother me at all.

That said, just because I hate something doesn’t mean it should be illegal. Otherwise we’d have to ban—well, you regular readers should be familiar enough with what I hate by now. The less the politicians interfere with people’s lives, even when those people are doing despicable things to themselves, the better.

* I guess if someone wanted to go really hardcore libertarian on me they could argue that governments should be free to decide whether they allow smoking in public places, and people could move to different cities accordingly. But it seems like it would be really weird for libertarians to argue in favor of this.

** Yes, I realize that capitalism is not perfect and that people don’t always act rationally (which, in this instance, means that not all restaurant owners would ban smoking of their own volition even if it were undoubtedly true that smoking increases revenues). But I believe my point is still valid, for the most part.

*** One of these days I’ll blog about how much I hate Keynesian economics. I’m sure there will be about four people who’ll enjoy it.

**** Also, speaking strictly anecdotally, it seems to me that a larger than normal percentage of restaurant employees smoke. And it seems pretty obvious that a smoker usually isn’t going to mind a smoky workplace.