RALEIGH – The restaurant industry is full of stupid people.
That’s the logical conclusion to draw from an argument made by many proponents of a statewide ban on smoking in restaurants. Although the bill in question appears to have been watered down quite a bit in a House committee, thanks to pressure from the North Carolina Restaurant Association, there’s no guarantee that the original, blanket prohibition won’t come back in some form.
That’s why it remains important to try to follow the odd reasoning of the prohibitionists.
Of course, their main points aren’t at all hard to grasp: they don’t like smoking. They don’t want people to smoke. They argue, correctly, that a smoking habit increases the risk of cancer and heart disease. They also argue correctly that second-hand smoke poses a nuisance to some non-smokers, while arguing incorrectly that second-hand smoke poses a major health risk to non-smokers.
The problem is that these points don’t really justify government action to ban smoking from restaurants. No one is forced to enter a private establishment, either to eat or work there. Whatever nuisances or even health risks are associated with hanging around in a smoky restaurant, they are voluntarily shouldered by willing patrons or workers. In a free society, people should be able to sort these issues out for themselves, to make decisions that best meet their needs and honor their beliefs.
Why shouldn’t smokers have a right to patronize a restaurant willing to have them? At heart, those who want to ban smoking from restaurants sound a lot to me as if they just want to ban smoking altogether. Prohibition isn’t the answer, as we’ve found in the past.
Faced with this principled objection to government intrusion into private decisions, the prohibitionists respond by making the aforementioned weird argument: there is no evidence that smoking bans hurt the restaurant business, and indeed may actually increase patronage.
This is beside the point – it’s about freedom, not earnings – as well as loopy. If there are many potential restaurant patrons who are deterred from going out to eat because they might smell smoke, then there is a strong incentive for some restaurants to cater to them with non-smoking establishments. There’s no law preventing them from doing that now. There is, in other words, no right to smoke in a restaurant unless the owner says it’s OK.
Advocates of the smoking ban must believe that restaurant owners are too stupid to recognize their own economic self-interest. No offense, but since the owners have money at stake and the prohibitionists do not, I tend to trust the former’s judgment in how best to make a buck.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.