Smoky View of Libertarianism

Smoking crusaders like to think of themselves as big libertarians. “It’s my right to puff where I like,” they rave. “What I do with and to my body is none of the government’s business.”

That is the same tired, specious bit of civics they flung at then-New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in January 1995 when he signed into law the Smoke-Free Air Act, which prohibited smokers from lighting up in the dining areas of all restaurants seating more than 35 and confined smoking to bar areas.

Now smoking fiends are trotting out their wounded liberties again and flinging them at the feet of Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who wants to go one step further than his predecessor and ban smoking at all the city’s restaurants and bars. This comes after a hefty and much decried hike in the city’s cigarette tax. The jump from 8 cents to $1.50 per pack has driven the price of some brands to more than $7 per pack.

Smokers are not in the mood for more grief. And they’re not the only ones. Despite evidence to the contrary, restaurateurs and bar owners maintain that the proposed law would decimate their clienteles.

In California, where a similar law has been in effect since 1998, the state’s Board of Equalization reported in 2001 that sales had risen 7.4% at restaurants and bars since the smoking ban took effect. And in a Los Angeles County Health Department survey in 2001, 55% of bar customers said they enjoyed smoke-free bars more than smoke-filled ones.

Still the chorus of boos goes on in New York. Enter the populist rhetoricians of the tobacco lobby, whose only hope of squashing Bloomberg’s sensible policy lies in distorting libertarianism. How?

First, by ignoring one of the central tenets of libertarian philosophy; that is, the oft-cited adage that my right to throw my fist ends at the tip of my neighbor’s nose. An oldie but goodie. I can do what I like with my own body, true, so long as--and here’s the part sophists omit--what I do doesn’t harm anyone else.

Secondhand smoke is toxic to bystanders. The nonsmoker’s right to patronize his favorite bar while breathing freely trumps the smoker’s need to slowly asphyxiate herself and her fellow patrons. Sure, nonsmoking patrons could go elsewhere, but they shouldn’t have to. Besides, we all have our favorite bars, places that are convenient geographically or demographically. The latter is especially true of gay people. Often, going elsewhere just isn’t an option.

Second, another keystone of libertarianism is the notion that freedoms come with responsibilities attached. Being free doesn’t mean you get to do whatever you want; that’s license. It also doesn’t mean that you don’t have to pay up when whatever you’ve insisted is your right to do turns sour in the doing.

Bloomberg’s proposed tax on cigarettes was meant to shore up New York City’s galloping debt, but it’s also arguably a way of forcing smokers to take some fiscal responsibility for contributing more than their fair share to a national health problem.

While it is true that smokers, when they smoke alone, harm only themselves, it is also true that the many diseases to which they often succumb because they smoke cost the public millions (in both insurance premiums and health-care services).

Smokers, like so many of us, are mavericks when they’re healthy but parasites when they’re not. They trash their bodies and then expect the rest of us to pick up the pieces, as well as most of the tab for the damage they’ve so defiantly done to themselves.

If Bloomberg’s proposal were truly fair, it would put most of the city’s cigarette tax directly into the coffers of the American Cancer Society or, better yet, the many organizations that fund research and support facilities that treat the self-inflicted sick. But that’ll never happen.

Meanwhile, smokers should shut up and, like true libertarians, confine their poisonous vices to their own bodies.