Healthy Caribbean Coalition - Smokers under attack
Jamaica Gleaner Online, January 22nd, 2010.
The Editor, Sir:
The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation has nothing to do with
protecting people from the supposed threat of 'second-hand' smoke.
Indeed, the bans are symptoms of a far more grievous threat, a cancer that has been spreading for
decades and has now metastasised throughout the body politic, spreading even to the tiniest organs of
local government. This cancer is the only real hazard involved - the cancer of unlimited government
power.
The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or is, in fact, just a phantom menace, as a
study published recently in the British Medical Journal indicates. The issue is: If it were harmful, what
would be the proper reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating people
about the potential danger and allowing them to make their own decisions, or should they seize the
power of government and force people to make the 'right' decision?
Unwanted intrusion
Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than trying to protect people from an
unwanted intrusion on their health, the bans are the unwanted intrusion.
Loudly billed as measures that only affect "public places," they have actually targeted private places:
restaurants, bars, night-clubs, shops and offices - places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules
or whose customers are free to go elsewhere if they don't like the smoke. Some local bans even harass
smokers in places where their effect on others is negligible, such as outdoor public parks.
The decision to smoke, or to avoid 'second-hand' smoke, is a question to be answered by each
individual, based on his own values and his assessment of the risks. This is the same kind of decision
free people make regarding every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or
invest, whom to befriend or
sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married or divorced, and so on.
All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful consequences; most are
controversial and invite dis-approval from the neighbours. But the individual must be free to make these
decisions. He must be free because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbours, and only his own
judgment can guide him through it.
That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of inhaling a few stray whiffs of
tobacco, while waiting for a table at your favourite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in
exaggerated alarm at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the unlimited intrusion of government
into our lives. We do not elect officials to control and manipulate our
behaviour.
I am, etc.
THOMAS LAPRADE- snowbird@tbaytel.net
Ontario, Canada