Smoking Ban Coming, for Better or for Worse
It's coming. In just over two months, the District's bars will go smoke-free. Once the smokers are banished to the sidewalks outside their favorite watering holes, the District will have joined 18 states and 474 municipalities that have done the same. It was at the start of this year the D.C. Council definitively endorsed legislation mandating that bars and restaurants snuff out the smokers; the restaurants did so this April, and the bars will follow suit come January 2007.
While smokers and civil libertarians alike opposed the legislation, they seem to have quietly accepted that they're either going to have to quit, invest in nicotine patches for those nights out, or spend more time outside. Until now. The Cato Institute, a prominent libertarian think-tank, recently published a rundown of why smoking bans are bad public policy. And even though the District's march towards smoke-free bars proceeds forward, it bears revisiting the many arguments for why it may be a bad idea.
The report's author, Thomas A. Lambert, an associate professor of law at the University of Missouri School of Law, argues against the smoking ban on three fronts -- externalities, preference shaping, and risk. On the first point, Lambert writes that the usual argument that second-hand smoke represents an externality that should be regulated by government is flawed. According to his logic, bar and restaurant owners alone bear the benefits and costs of smoke-filled air, and the people willing to work for them and the customers coming to their establishment will fairly and efficiently determine how much smoke they're willing to take on their nights out. On the preference shaping point, Lambert argues against government taking a role in telling individuals what they can and cannot do, noting that the more smoking is made is to seem rebellious, the more likely teenagers and young adults will risk trying it. Finally, he challenges the conventional wisdom regarding the risks of second-hand smoke, arguing that studies have drawn much less fatalistic conclusions on its effects than smoking ban proponents let on. As for his preferred alternative to a government-imposed smoking ban, Lambert writes:
A better approach would be a hands-off policy permitting business owners to set their own smoking policies. Motivated by the pursuit of profits, the owners would have the proper incentive to maximize social welfare. The market would be far more likely than government regulation to accommodate the various preferences of nonsmokers and smokers alike.Of course, each of his arguments is refutable in whole or in part, but they do present a somewhat compelling academic rationale for not imposing smoking bans.
So did the District make the right decision? Or will this be another failed experiment in social engineering? I personally still side with the smoking ban, and I can find plenty of ways to argue against Lambert.
First off, his reliance on the wisdom of the market seems misplaced. Lambert assumes that a bar with extremely smoky air will lose patrons and potential employees. This would be true is every bar were the same. But they're not. Every bar has something different to offer, and we make our choices based on many factors -- location, clientele, and entertainment are among those. Therefore, our bar-going choices are shaped by more than simply whether or not they are smoky, something a bar owner knows. Non-smokers should be able to enjoy a comfortable environment when they go out. And since it's smokers producing the externalities, it should be they who have to give up their habit, not the non-smoking bar-goers. As for the risk factor, he quotes one study to refute the notion that second-hand smoke is bad for you -- and it involves smokers married to non-smokers. Sure, in that context, maybe second-hand smoke won't have that much of an effect (how many smokers blow smoke in their significant other's face?). But put many smokers in a bar over a long period of time, and you have a much more significant exposure to smoke. Most galling is this statement:
But even if the surgeon general's report is accepted on its face, it still does not provide sufficient support for government-mandated smoking bans. The report purports to find a 20 to 30 percent increase in cancer and heart disease risks for nonsmokers after chronic ETS exposure. While those numbers sound large, nonsmokers' risks of cancer and heart disease are quite small to begin with, and even with a 20 or 30 percent increase, those risks remain quite small.But they remain larger than they would be without the presence of smoke, don't they? I don't want to get cancer from second-hand smoke, and it's not a relief knowing that my chances of getting cancer from second-hand smoke are only marginally higher than if I wasn't exposed to it. The point is that they're higher -- and I don't want cancer.
After a night out at the Black Cat this week, the smoke that infested my clothes made me yearn for the coming day where immediate laundry service wasn't a consequence of going to see a band play. But there are plenty of people who see otherwise.
Where do you stand?