Overheard in a cigar shop: Customer – “I’ve smoked cigars for years and have always inhaled. You get the full flavor that way.” Shop – “The taste buds aren’t in your lungs ya know.”
Smoking is not about taste. It’s not about the taste of burning tobacco leaves in your mouth; a taste which, to the uninitiated, is so disgusting that it makes you want to retch. Contrary to most romantic visions of why we engage in the vices we engage in, we don’t do it for the taste. We don’t drink wine for the fruity high notes. Or rather, most people engaging in a vice do not break down their vices in this way. Tobacco is a nicotine creator, and nicotine is a drug. A cigar is a nicotine delivery system. Nicotine is best absorbed by the lungs, not the sinuses and not the linings of the mouth.
To misquote Freud “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.” All of the romanticism aside, nicotine is what you get from smoking, chewing, ingesting tobacco. And, yes I know, this approach to vices means that wine is there just for the buzz. Wine is an alcohol delivery system, this is why I prefer my wine distilled. If I’m just wanting to catch a buzz, why not shortcut the process? What I am trying to point out here is that, if the man overheard in a cigar shop just wants more nicotine while smoking his cigars, let him get it. It doesn’t matter in the end how he gets it.
Flavor isn’t in the mouth. Flavor comes more from the nose. You have to let the vapor of what you are consuming rise up into the sinuses to get the full flavor. Cigar smokers call this retrohaling. My father blew smoke out through his nose quite frequently while smoking cigarettes. I never could get the hang of that, but deep lung breathing that first cigarette in the morning definitely got a head buzz going, every time I did it. These are the kinds of things you can do when your mucus membranes are deadened by thirty years of smoking.
But you do have to get the smoke/aerosolized alcohol/chocolate, etcetera into the back of the mouth and top of the throat to get the full flavor of whatever it is you are consuming. Knowing this is one of the perks of insisting on cold, hard facts. Research has instructed me on how I should consume things for the best effect. Listening to others. Learning from their failures. Learning from their successes. Reading as widely as possible.
This is also why I know why I can’t taste anything most of the time. Clogged sinuses. I really need to find a place without allergens to live.
I hear you asking what about cancer? out there in the darkness somewhere. Yes, you. I hear you. Let me put your concerns about cancer to rest; you will get cancer eventually. The only way to avoid getting cancer is to die before it shows up. But what about lung cancer? Yes, smoking leads to lung cancer in people who are susceptible to that mutation in the cells of the lungs. Mouth cancer is even worse and you can get that from ingesting any tobacco product or drinking alcohol. You can quibble over percentages of risk, but not inhaling smoke into the lungs doesn’t protect you from cancer, even of the lungs. In the end, just living will give you cancer. The longer you live, the more certain it is to happen. It is in the nature of cell division itself for that process of division to go astray. Go astray and lead to cancer, eventually. It is all just a matter of time.
We don’t do recreational drugs based on the health risks, dear reader. If we did we’d all be smoking weed all the time and certainly not drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco. We would be smoking marijuana/MJ/reefer/weed because smoking that plant is an essentially harmless recreational pastime with little to no negative side effects in adults. No negative side effects aside from making smoking cigarettes look more harmless than it is by comparison.
I was a smoker for many years. I smoked weed and I smoked cigarettes and I would smoke a cigar if you handed one to me. I wasn’t picky and I didn’t worry about illness because like all young people I was immortal. I was ten foot tall and bulletproof until the day I wasn’t. Until the day I realized that I got winded more easily. Couldn’t hold my breath underwater like I used to. Couldn’t do a lot of things the way I used to. So I quit smoking. I quit smoking anything, altogether.
I quit smoking weed easily, simply because I wanted to. I found no further use for the pastime, so I quit. However, quitting tobacco smoking took six or seven years. Quitting my physical nicotine addiction took patience and planning and the deaths of multiple loved ones before I could finally give it up. It required the births of my children. Quitting smoking required that I learn REBT therapy and apply it to the activity of smoking. Quitting smoking is harder than quitting heroin to pull off.
How did I apply REBT? I would think of the smell that an empty bar has in the morning when you show up to clean it. I performed this mental exercise every time I craved a cigarette, especially when I ended up smoking one. I would wilfully summon the acrid, acidic smell of alcohol, vomit and old smoke that hits you in the face when you open the doors to a bar after a heavy party night, and I would do that while I was actively smoking a new cigarette. I kept doing it until I felt ill when I thought about smoking. Then the cravings stopped. After a three pack a day habit infused into my blood as a child, a habit extended by me as a adult finally came to an end, I felt much better. Like I was breathing, really breathing, for the first time.
My second experiment with linking smells to behaviors I wanted to change has not gone nearly as well as the smoking cessation practice did. Linking the taste of french fries to the smell of a grease trap has not gotten me to quit eating fried potatoes yet. That is still a work in progress. A work in progress that might be more successful if fried potatoes didn’t taste so damn good and I wasn’t so hungry all the freaking time. Nicotine can help with that desire to be eating all the time, and being overweight carries its own risks. More risks than ingesting nicotine? Depends on your genetics.
Insist on cold, hard facts. Relish in them. Nicotine is the drug being delivered. Alcohol is the drug being delivered. That is why we engage in those pastimes, to ingest the drugs in question. When you are doing that, make sure that you properly inhale the smoke. Aerate the distilled spirits when sipped. Allow the chocolate to melt and linger on the tongue before swallowing. You’ll enjoy your vices more, which is kinda the point in having vices.
A tip o’ the hat (h/t) is due for The Skeptic’s Guide to the Universe on Facebook. It is because of them that I drug this reedited series of comments, insights and further thoughts out of my drafts bin and published it. Without their social media editor’s willingness to republish spurious data on a subject near and dear to my heart (nicotine therapy in the form of vaping) I wouldn’t have bothered to kraft this bit of business into a shape that could be published. Thanks, I guess?
E-cigarettes not only supply “clean” nicotine, but also look like cigarettes–many even having an LED light at the tip. These products, which contain no tobacco, are noncombustible. While we’d certainly benefit from a review of their safety as well as their efficacy as cessation devices, you don’t need to be a heart surgeon to know they aren’t as dangerous as the real thing.
The article caught my eye because a couple of film friends were vaping at the Drafthouse the other day. (Their recommendation? www.cigtechs.com KS-808, or the JOYE 510)
If you’re still smoking after all the health information that’s been thrown at you in the last ten years, maybe a nicotine vaporizer is worth a try. Can’t harm you more than smoking does.
I laughed my butt off watching the Yuppie Mephistopheles do his best to convince me that I needed to smoke cigarettes. The film Thank You for Smoking revolves around a big tobacco lobbyist, Nick Naylor, and his experiences talking up the subject of smoking. Considering how smoking is reviled these days, and how many arguments I’ve had with people concerning smoking bans, and being a former smoker myself, none of the ironic humor found in this film was lost on me.
I’m not after you, I’m after them.
I noticed at one point that Nick Naylor’s son attends a school named St. Euthanasius. It is the little things, the details that the set designing team included in the film that make the film as funny as it is. Written and directed by libertarian thinkers, this film takes great pleasure in poking holes in much of the hysteria around cigarettes and smoking; while at the same time lampooning everything from lobbying to product placement in films. If you have a sense of humor, then I can’t recommend this film strongly enough.
Well, it looks like the smoking bans are going statewide now. Texas apparently has a ban up for consideration according to Thomas Firey over at CATO in this podcast.
The funny thing is, the reason I think it’s funny, is that Thomas Firey’s final suggestion should sound familiar to anyone who’s heard me argue the subject of smoking before.
CATO’s regulation seems to enjoy beating dead horses as much as I do. They have offered a rebuttal to the ACSH article that calls them to task for belittling the health threat posed by cigarette smoke. Quoting from the article:
We started that article with this declaration: “Truth was an early victim in the battle against tobacco.” We ended the article with this admonition: “When that goal [i.e., truth] yields to politics, tainting science in order to advance predetermined ends, we are all at risk. Sadly, that is exactly what has transpired as our public officials fabricate evidence to promote their crusade against big tobacco.”
OK, granted. They spin some pretty good arguments for the CDC’s figures being exaggerated. But I think they are confused about who and what is motivating the witch hunt that the CDC is simply the public edifice for. It isn’t the gov’t that is after ‘big tobacco’, as referendum after referendum and ordinance after ordinance against public smoking is proposed and passes. It’s the average person on the street who doesn’t smoke himself (which is now the majority of the population, by the way) doesn’t want to have to smell someone else’s cigarette smoke, and figures “there oughta be a law”. Suddenly, there are laws. This is how democracy works. (Yes, I know, we’re a Republic. The majority says we aren’t any more, apparently they don’t understand the meaning of the words in the pledge that they recited daily. I guess that’s what happens when you let socialists write documents for free thinking people) The fact that there are serious health consequences to smokers, and costs that get passed on to the government as the guy left holding the tab at the end of the night, simply buttresses the argument against allowing people to smoke, at all. Facts that the regulation article itself admits:
Second, we are wrongly censured for stating that “the hazards of smoking remain largely speculative. “What we actually said is quite different, indeed mostly contrary: “Evidence does suggest that cigarettes substantially increase the risk of lung cancer, bronchitis, and emphysema. The relationship between smoking and other diseases is not nearly so clear.”
Pretty much puts case closed on it for me. My point in bringing up the evidence against smoking was never to call attention to how many deaths, and the obvious manipulation of statistics to awfulize the outcome should be ridiculed; but the facts do show a connection between poorer health, shorter less healthy lives, and smoking tobacco. Since I have health problems already, it benefits me to choose non-smoking establishments when I do go out. Luckily for me Austin is a proper socialist paradise and has taken any need to think for myself, about where to go on a night out, out of my hands.
…Which is good, because if it was left to my anarchist/libertarian brethren I’d have no choice but to walk in and sniff the air before deciding if I wanted to actually stop anywhere. Probably just stay home in that case (the recurring “what do you want to eat?” argument is hard enough on its own) which would be cheaper.
On the bright side, I watched a segment on Beyond Tomorrow tonight dealing with an ‘anti-smoking’ injection. Clinical study results are positive (success rates approaching 60 percent) which is good. Most people who try to quit ‘cold turkey’ fail (3 percent success rate) The various forms of nicotine replacement therapies fair only slightly better (30 percent success rate) So the drug manufacturer is obviously quite pleased with the results. I myself quit cold turkey, after three tries. I was able to apply an REBT technique to the nicotine craving; I would think of the smell that an empty bar has in the morning when you show up to clean it, every time I wanted a cigarette. It took a while, but I was able to beat it. I actually feel ill when I think about smoking these days. (I’m applying the technique to craving french fries now. I don’t know if that’s going to work or not. Love them fries)
I hear you saying “what if I just want to smoke?” Fine by me. Go do it somewhere else. Here, you can have my old supply of coffin nails, I’m not going to need them anymore.
It’s my curse to see them, and then spend my time arguing with complete buffoons about them.
Like the smoking argument, the solution the the drinking and driving problem isn’t less alcohol consumption, or more expensive drinks. Just as the solution to problems with second hand smoke isn’t keeping people from smoking. The solution is architectural, or in this case, a zoning issue. If it was possible to set up neighborhood pubs or sidewalk cafes as they do in other cities around the world, it wouldn’t be necessary to drive down to the pub to get a pint, or to the cafe to get a taste. You could walk there.
De-stressing the forbidden nature of alcohol would go along way in stopping teenage drinking as well, but I don’t expect anyone will listen to this argument any more than they have listened to the other arguments I’ve offered.
The city of Austin proposed a smoking ordinance in 2003 that would have banned smoking in public places. It passed. They then went on to offer to sell smoking permits to businesses that wanted to allow smoking. In other words, they could pay to get a permit to do something that they should have been able to do anyway, but now have to pay for because the city government felt pressured to act. Then they realized they’d created a massive cash cow that they could suck funds out of. It’s a beautiful world, isn’t it? There was a chance that other alternatives to the original ban might be entertained alongside the permits idea.
Rock Howard proposed the following in response to the suggestion that any form of compromise would be an abandonment of our principles as libertarians. This is a compromise on the smoking ordinance that would simply clarify business practices that already exist, allowing the customer to then make an informed choice.
To me an example of a workable compromise would be:
a) If they wish, an establishment can sign up on a city maintained smoking registry, but doing so is not necessary if the owner puts up a sign near the entrance(s) of the establishment detailing their smoking policy. (Minimal signage would be: “Smoking Permitted”.) or
b) If they wish, an establishment can sign up on a city maintained “smoke free” registry, but doing so is not necessary if the owner puts up a sign near the entrance(s) of the establishment to the effect detailing their smoking policy. (Minimal signage would be: “No Smoking” or “Smoke Free”.)
This compromise would hopefully placate those who consider cigarette smoke as an assault on their personages. (For some people it actually is an assault) As far as abridging rights goes, it is simply coupling the right of the property owner to the equal and legitimate responsibility to make their smoking policy clear to prospective patrons either through signage or by the public process of signing up on a registry.
As far as the permit idea goes, let’s see if we can dig up actual examples where a permitting process for smoking turned into a ban. If we can do that, then that would be helpful as it might give the business owners more intestinal fortitude about defending their rights. At this point many are seeing this as a life and death issue for their businesses and that makes more susceptible to a slippery slope compromise.
When further objections were offered, he then posted the following.
It is possible to stay with our principle but also get involved with the current process too. If we refuse to get involved for the sake of principle, then we abandon our constituents to their fate (which likely entails a slippery slope compromise that dooms them in the future) The only other avenue is the courts, but we have no friends or power their either.
I have seen this fight in other cities and with the current political mindset of the voters, as long as it remains a political battle, we are doomed. If we can be smart and lucky we might be able to help craft a compromise that staves off the rights-snatchers for a while and, more importantly, helps preserve the livelihoods of our core constituents for the time being. If we do, then we will have bought ourselves some time as well as additional support for the long term project of opening up the minds of the people to the larger issue (i.e., the critical importance of personal property rights.) This will take time and money and, without it, we are just kidding ourselves about our ability to win this battle.
The only reason that I used the word compromise in the first place is that there are only two possibilities right now: 1) no compromise happens and the current harsh Smoking Ordinance goes into effect; or 2) a compromise occurs to stave off the most harsh effects of the ordinance for some time. I do not accept that there is a third option (as much as we would all prefer it) in the near future. I suggest that to get to the preferred outcome that we all want, it makes sense to be involved in the current process as the outcome of “no compromise” will simply kill off many of the small businesses that we are supposedly trying to support.
In point of fact, if the local [LP] works against some sort of compromise, then we are, in effect, working to enact the Smoking Ordinance. Go ahead and do so if that is what you want, but in my considered opinion that approach is counterproductive in the short, medium and long run.
Then the argument really started.
If we try to mediate a compromise in this case, we are saying that government taking away just some of our rights is ok verses taking all of them. If we need to take this to court to fight this injustice we should, it would really make a name for ourselves. We should stand up for what’s right, not for what we feel is acceptable for the moment.
Smoker
What about the rights of the non-smokers to do business in a smoke-free environment? What about the real health issues involved in breathing smoky air? I assure you that the solid majority of Austinites are 4-square behind an outright ban based on those two arguments alone.
I don’t agree with them, but they are our audience.
A requirement to sign the exterior of your business is no different than putting ingredients on the outside of packages, or spelling out the details of a contract in advance. It’s not a compromise it’s collaboration, an acknowledgement that there are telling arguments for those who support a ban, but that a ban is not necessary or even desirable.
IMO, signing the exterior of your business IS what is right. Some of us would prefer to do without the smoke. Thank you, Rock, for the level headed suggestion.
Afterword
The outcome of the vote on the smoking permits was a landslide in favor of it, the council couldn’t resist that cash cow. The local LP candidates (except for the exceptional Rock Howard) opposed all compromises and sunk any chance of sidestepping what happened then, and what happened next. At the suggestion of the moderator at TCLPactive, I then moved the resultant discussion to my Liberty List
Getting in your car and driving will lead to serious health consequences, to the same degree that lighting a single cigarette will lead to serious health consequences.
Smoker
It has nothing to do with the number of trips. I can get in my car right now and drive, and while I stand a statistical chance of harm, the mere act of driving the car does not increase the chance in and of itself.
My wife and I were test car drivers for quite awhile. She has driven more than a million miles. She’s still breathing.
A relative of mine has smoked 3 packs of filterless cigarettes a day for 30 years. He’s had cancer twice, (thankfully not lung cancer) cancer that is statistically related to smoking, and he still insists that the smoking isn’t the problem, all the while smoking like a chimney. He may still be breathing now, the latest radiation treatments won’t start for a few more weeks. The man could have lived in good health to the age of 100 or more, without the cigarettes. I personally don’t think he’ll see 70 because of them.
Your rights are not being transgressed when someone smokes in your presence, because you are free to leave, or not to breathe the smoke, or to wear a mask. Your rights are being transgressed when someone forces you to do something that harms you or others, or when they harm you directly.
Smoker
When I am engaged in commerce, dining out for instance, I and the parties I am doing business with have entered into an informal contract. Part of that contract involves a smoke-free environment if you are doing business with me. During the process of commerce, while I’m eating for example, someone decides to engage in their particular form of self-destruction and lights a cigarette.
How am I free to leave? I daresay that the owner of the establishment would take exception to my departure before contracts are satisfied, before I paid, in this example. As someone who is known to demand a smoke-free environment, why should I be expected to leave? Since non-smoking is something that I demand up front, should not the smoker be ejected if he refuses to leave?
…”wear a mask”. Why doesn’t the reverse apply? Since smoking carries no negative impacts, let the smokers wear a mask and not waste a single breath of their precious nicotine.
…”not to breathe the smoke”. Not breathing as a choice. No, I don’t think so.
The truth is, when someone lights up in my presence, they are in fact forcing me to engage in their habits. It’s a cop-out for libertarians to say “you’re free to leave” or “it’s a (property) rights issue”, because that is just the surface. The reality is much more complex than that.
Your usage of “informal” is as a euphemism for implied. A contract not discussed and not agreed to is a contract which does not exist.
Smoker
Informal does not equal implied. The words have different meanings. Walk on a check at a restaurant and see if the restaurateur doesn’t think you have a contract. That you are expected to pay for services rendered and food consumed is an informal contract; informal because you did not agree to the contract in writing, in advance.
When people complain about an aspect of free-wheeling liberty (such as people lighting up whenever they please whenever the owner of the property they’re standing on doesn’t mind), it is my reflexive assumption that the person making the argument would turn a blind eye toward government force should it be stamping down on that aspect of liberty…
Smoker
I have the right to object to harm and I will exercise that right vehemently. To put the shoe on the other foot; do you put tags on your car? carry a driver’s license? pay income taxes? If you answer yes to any of those questions, then by your definition you can apply the label to yourself, because government force is used to mandate things which are infringements on our liberty as we define them.
Austin banned smoking recently, and no, I’m not going to spend time fighting that battle now. The alternative wording (see above) that I agreed with was deemed a compromise by the local activists, and they decided to stand on principle and go down with the ship. Well, the property rights ship sank, and smoking is banned here now, unless the business owner agrees to pay the city for the privilege of allowing smoking. As Austin is “the liberal island in the conservative sea of Texas”, this is probably the way it’s going to be for awhile.
The net effect is positive for me personally, since health issues are deemed too touchy-feely to be taken seriously by hard-core types. My choices were reduced to either choke on the smoke of the free-wheeling, or breath the socialist air. So my fellow libertarians (who love to talk about choice) forced me to pick the lesser of two weevils. Not a position I relish, I assure you.
That’s also an assertion. I don’t know what study it’s based on but I’ve enough smoking and second hand smoking studies demolished by examining their statistical methods that I don’t put any stock in them. Cato has plenty of these. The claim that 400,000 Americans die every year from tobacco is an outright fabrication from the American Cancer Society, for example.
Back to the original question, the only acceptable smoking ordinance IMO is having establishments clearly post their smoking policy at the entrance so you can make your decision before entering, as was suggested by Rock Howard previously
About the only thing that the writer got right was that it’s not an issue of smoker’s rights.
What most people who aren’t in the architecture field don’t realize is just how controlled building standards are in EVERY OTHER AREA except indoor air quality. The establishment of building codes that spell out minimum standards would go a long way toward addressing the problems of smoking vs. non-smoking, giving more choice to people in the long run rather than a strict smoking/smoke-free establishment.
Back in the good ol’ days the upper class spent the money to have smoking rooms, because it was ill-mannered to smoke in front of the ladies. Now we’re all slaving in a socialist paradise, chucking the niceties of proper etiquette and the class structure, dragging the unwilling along with us kicking and screaming in whichever direction the whim of the majority takes us. Soon we will all be trailer trash (what in math is referred to as a Lowest Common Denominator) and not even the trailer trash will be allowed to smoke. Ah, democracy.
Business owners want one thing over all others: profit. I say fine, but let’s get to the real cost and benefit of the systems that we create. restaurateurs and club owners will not take a hard stand for property rights. It doesn’t sell food and drink. Oh, they’ll cheer us on, but they’ll toe whatever line that a) causes the least trouble, and b) makes them the most cash in the system.
…and the system does not take long-term health effects into account.
So, you had business owners who were more than happy to crowd everyone together with sub-standard ventilation, breathing each other’s exhaust fumes, because it was cheap and the majority of the population smoked. Now the majority are non-smokers, don’t want to smell smoke, and are willing to subvert property rights (Just as it’s been done since the beginning of time) in order not to have to. Guess what? The business owners will make the just-enough-to-prove-a-point noise about it, and then roll over and comply. That’s how they ‘work the system’ to their advantage. They get to appear sympathetic to the ‘poor smoker’, but they can follow the majority and their dollars into a non-smoking paradise; best of all they get to keep their poorly ventilated, overly crowded buildings just the way they are, and look good in the process.
Best bang for the buck that there is.
This has been my point all along. Ya’ll can stay on the high horse of property rights, and loose. You will lose, mark my words. If it’s a choice of defending this myth that business ownership is some kind of grandiose last stand for property or defending my desire to breathe cleaner air, then I’m going to breath easier.
I could do that or we could establish that the system should take account of air quality, just as it does minimum structural standards, minimum exiting standards, minimum bathroom sizes, etc, etc, ad infinitum. Call it signage, call it minimum codes, call it defending my property, my body, from the negative health effects of your bad habits, even when I’m not physically on land that I own. I don’t care what you call it but it’s better than establishing smoking bans all over the nation, which is where we are headed right now. Then we can add tobacco to the list of black market drugs. How about ‘smoke-easy’ establishments? They probably already exist in New York.
Do you know what I would love to see? Smokers wearing space helmets to smoke in. With a HEPA filtration system on the helmet, no smoke would escape to annoy the non-smokers. Can you arrest him for smoking in his own private space? Would anyone bother? That would be an argument involving the rights of the smoker and no one else. Do you think we’d find a volunteer to test the theory? Or does even the most devout smoker balk at being cooped up in small space with too much smoke in it? If you really believe that it’s not a health hazard to smoke, then why would you not be willing to?
There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. When there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.
Ayn Rand
I’m sure some of you out there dismissed my solution out of hand “Bah, more minimum standards. Just another there-oughta-be-a-law solution for problems that are none of the gov’ts business.”
Now, if I were talking about law, then I would agree with you. However, that wasn’t the subject. Building codes are not laws. Yes, I know, in most places they are adopted and enforced as laws; but they start out as guidelines drawn up by groups concerned about public safety. They are minimum standards for safe building, and are as necessary in the scheme of things as any written manual. Anyone interested in limiting their liability, and most businesses are interested in this, will attempt to follow some acceptable standard of practice. So the creation of minimum standards for building was inevitable and actually desirable.
The problem with building codes is that they become bound up in the bureaucracy of government. Wander down to the building department in nearly any city in the U.S. and you will see the stellar results we get from this approach. In Austin, the indecipherable rat’s maze of overlapping authorities has lead to the need to create an office – the Development Assistance Center – just to tell the newcomers where they should start in the maze. One size fits all – and you will comply with the standards.
Tying the codes to government has several other undesirable side effects. I want to focus on one of them: The negative effects that rigid standards imposes on innovation. Many of the new technologies face impediments placed in their way by codes that were drawn up before they existed. IMHO, minimum standards for indoor air quality is one of the areas that has been affected by this, which has lead to the panic over the negative effects of secondhand smoke.
The solution to making the codes more responsive is to divorce the creation and enforcement of building codes from the government altogether. Much like independent Underwriters Laboratories creates minimum standards and tests assemblies and devices based on those standards, building codes should be based on logical, definable standards that can be tested, inspected and approved by any sufficiently educated third party. Allow the property owners and the professionals who design the facilities to decide what standards they wish to meet; and then hold them accountable for failures in design.
…and the solution to the smoking issue in the built environment is to create a minimum standard for indoor air quality that addresses the public’s concern.
It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the most responsive to change
Charles Darwin
Editor’ note and Postscript
This is another historical argument from my file of archived messages. Austin passed several smoking bans. Passed and overturned and passed again. This back and forth of the issue of how to handle the hazards of smoking in the city of Austin lead to some interesting thoughts on mine and other’s parts. This is some of it.
Since Yahoo has shuttered its groups and removed the group archives from public access, this record and others like it scattered across blog sites on the internet are the only records available of the more than twenty years of conversations that happened in groups hosted by Yahoo unless Archive.org or some other group interested in preserving history gets ahold of those old group archives.
These conversations were a clusterfuck to edit together the first time, and it has been a clusterfuck every other time I have tried to re-edit them. Pulling quotation marks and semicolons left and right. Typing out full words for stupid abbreviations. I think it sort of makes sense now. This article remains a cautionary tale for trying to record conversations in a format that doesn’t permit real dialog. The question that should be asked before embarking on this task is this one: “is it really worth the trouble? Can I turn the dialog into a monologue that doesn’t sound insane?” If the answer to that question is no, then don’t even start the editing process in the first place.
There were arguments along the way through the conversation about smoking bans that suggested something to the effect that “the average person doesn’t care about smoking, and so the smoking ban will never pass if put to a vote.” Not too long after the Round 3 discussion, a referendum on banning smoking indoors in Austin was put before the voters, and it passed by a slim majority. This development put Case Closed on the subject of smoking here in Austin, and it reversed the council’s transparent attempt to milk cash out of business owners who wanted to cater to smoking clientele.
The battle went on in court over the new ban, but it never looked good and eventually was upheld. Personally, I don’t think the courts want to reverse a ban instituted by referendum. There is such a fear of the will of the majority that minority rights are ignored when the majority deems it necessary. This has been true since the day when democracy was invented.
So the dust up over the property rights of business owners comes to naught, except for those business owners who see a serious dent in their profit margin in complying with the new ordinance. Which is pretty much how I saw it shaping up in the beginning.
