Banning Cigarettes

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I remember the first time I noticed the anti-smoking Nazis. It was in Cambridge and I saw a sign not only stating it was a no smoking area, but it was a city ordinance. Lots of businesses at that point were putting up no smoking signs. Restaurants had no smoking sections. It was the first time I had heard of a law against smoking.

My thought at the time was that it was doomed to failure. Only a nut would care so much about smoking to demand the proliferation of these laws. It seemed like the wacko fad you’d find in Cambridge or Boulder, but nowhere else.

A good rule of life is to always remember that the Left is crazier and more committed than you can imagine. There’s always an “11” on their crazy meter. In this case, anti-smoking laws spread like wildfire to the point where some jurisdictions ban smoking in your own home. Now Seattle is banning smoking outside in public areas.

Smoking cigarettes and other tobacco products in Seattle’s parks became illegal on Monday, as the U.S. Pacific Northwest’s largest city joined other American metropolises in restricting puffing in public.

Seattle’s Parks and Recreation officials voted in May to ban smoking in all of its 465 parks. It had previously required smokers to maintain 25-feet minimum distances from other visitors in any publicly accessible park land, the city said.

On Monday, the city, on its website, encouraged park goers to “smell flowers, not smoke.”

The ban follows similar restrictions in more than 1,000 other U.S. cities and communities across the nation, including New York, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Portland, the city said.

Cities have pursued the ban as the dangers of cigarette smoking became more widely accepted, and because of cigarette butt litter.

“Tobacco use is the leading preventable cause of death and disease both locally and in the United States, so it makes sense to take actions that promote health and healthy environments in our public spaces,” Jeff Duchin, Interim Health Officer for Public Health in Seattle and King County, said in a statement after the May vote.

In Seattle, park rangers and police officers enforce the ban. A verbal warning follows a first offense, followed by a written trespass warning. Repeat offenders are subject to arrest.

Imagine lockup in Seattle.

Thug: What you here for?

Hipster: Smoking, sir!

Of course, this move is due to the fact that smoking is just about gone from American society. Smoking rates are at all-time lows and it is now rare to smell cigarettes in public. Smokers, yielding to constant harassment, go away to smoke. Office buildings now make smokers stand away from the door so you don’t even smell smoke there anymore.

The bigger issue is the rise of vaping. The electronic cigarette has turned out to be the greatest smoking cessation aid ever. I know plenty of people who quit by using one of those things. I see people puffing on those things more than I see smoking. The health effects are trivial and the cost is far less than smoking so I don’t see why anyone would not go this route.

You have to wonder if it is not getting close to the point where it would be a good idea to ban cigarettes entirely. Smoking cigarettes is mostly a habit of the poor so the lunatics can pretend they are doing justice. They can get one last shot at the evil tobacco firms. Enforcement would not be difficult as many retailers are getting out of the cigarette business anyway. The black market would be trivial.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not in favor of it. I was never in favor of banning smoking in public. I spent many a night in a smoky bar either screwing up my courage to talk to the pretty girl or commiserating with the boys about the lack of women. If the bar wants to allow smoking that’s their business. These small decisions must be left to the people. It’s the natural order.

That said, if public health is your goal, banning cigarettes now makes a lot of sense. Unlike narcotics, smoking is not a thing you do on your free time by yourself or with a few addicts in a flophouse. Unlike alcohol, smoking is not a social elixir. Ban cigarettes and most will quit and the rest take up cigars or e-cigarettes.

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Comments (Historical)

The comments below were originally posted to thezman.com.

15 Comments

chief ten beers #5719 July 8, 2015 6:26 pm 0
What to say to this… not poor, not uneducated. Been smoking for a good 40 years and can keep up or out pace my nonsmoking friends who, by the way, are younger than me. live and let live.
CaptDMO #5705 July 7, 2015 2:43 pm 0
There ARE the options when someone DEMANDS that outdoor space be smoke free.1. Break their legs, and leave them to “public health”.2. Show them your fully automatic assault revolver, with “high capacity” clip, laser sights, armor piercing dum dum rounds, bayonet, and silencer.Say:”Castle Doctrine!”3. Ask them to remove themselves to solace and sanctity of their own personal castile doctrine, ESPECIALLY if they are on the dole, alien “looking”, or enjoy ANY “special protections” by virtue of accident of birth (or choice) in ANY way.(Hmmmm…MAYBE some exception to military folks in good standing there)Be polite in ALL cases of course. No need to be uncivil or antisocial.
gunther #5702 July 7, 2015 11:50 am 0
I find it interesting that tobacco use is becoming more restrictive at the same time as marijuana restriction is lessening (legalized in some regions, laws not enforced in others). It’s possible that these more restrictive tobacco laws make it easier to introduce marijuana legalization — having someone light up after a meal in a restaurant or during a ball game might be a step too far for many people. But, if marijuana use follows existing smoking bans in public spaces, maybe it slips in without too much fuss.
thezman #5707 July 7, 2015 4:34 pm 0
The war on smoking has always been a class ware, not a health war. Through the fifties and sixties, smoking was a cool habit of the rich and famous. Mass produced smokes made smoking easy for the masses. A man in the 30’s started smoking by rolling his own. In the 50’s he had a pack rolled up his sleeve. Then all of a sudden the cool kids stopped smoking and got into health. Then the boomers, feeling their age in the 80’s decided that everyone had to join them in their health fetish.Legal weed is the thing for the cool kids these days. That way the old farts can pretend to be hip by supporting legal weed and boring everyone with stories of their youth. There’s a reason why no one is opening up dispensaries in the ghetto. Once the riff-raff are buying weed at Walmart, the pendulum will swing the other way.
BillH #5699 July 7, 2015 10:11 am 0
I’m alarmed that Seattle has banned smoking in public parks. Can I still smoke weed and fornicate there? If not, I’m switching to San Francisco for my outings.
John the River #5696 July 7, 2015 9:43 am 0
I must confess, I’m one of those non-smokers that initially cheered for the success of the anti-smoking campaigns to stamp out smoking in restaurants and pubs. I always felt that cigarette smoking; the smell, the irritation in my eyes and the disgusting remnants of ash and the butts to be found everywhere was a habit that I’d love to see go away. Yes, I was a sensitive little flower, in this case.Later I was alarmed at how far the whole pogrom went and the ease in which peoples rights could be erased; for the children. Smoking in parks, on the street, company cars and trucks, anywhere inside hospitals; it seemed that it was getting to the point that the only place that smokers could smoke was going to be inside their own home. Today in some places they are going after that right to.Well, to the smokers. I’m sorry I went along for so long. Now I’m more afraid of the precedent that been established to be used in God knows what future campaign. Guns? Liquor? Porn? Bacon?
UKer #5701 July 7, 2015 10:18 am 0
Another UK aside. Smoking is banned in our hospitals (for which I can see some logic) but all that happens is that the smokers go out, in their nightdresses and pyjamas, often pushing a drip on a mobile stand, and go right out of the hospital premises and on to the public street, which may be a good couple of hundred yards away to light up. I do wonder if some of them never quite make it back, especially if it is raining hard.
dries #5695 July 7, 2015 8:07 am 0
Meanwhile US Chamber of Commerce is “engaged in a worldwide campaign to block antismoking laws. These include taxes on cigarettes in the Philippines, graphic health warnings on cigarette packs in Jamaica and Nepal, a plan to prohibit the display of cigarettes by retailers in Uruguay and restrictions on smoking in public spaces in Moldova.”. I am not a fan of NYT, but they rightly pointed out that many hospitals & pharma companies belong to US Chamber of Commerce. Quite hypocritical of them.
Becky #5692 July 7, 2015 7:51 am 0
A bar (or other privately owned busines) is not a public space in the sense the courthouse or library are. The bar owner pays the rent/taxes/upkeep. Business owners will do what they think the public wants in order to gain their business. If you really think companies that put pink ribbons on their products, or advocate for green energy, etc. are caring about much more than profits, I think you are mistaken. Capitalism is under attack. It is not longer a good thing to offer the right product at the right price at the right time; it must have a moral element. The social justice warrior is the new in thing, and a company that slaps a label on themselves are the new version of Vacal Havel’s poster test. Everything is political now, even the weather. Try checking out of a store in my area and the last part of the transaction is a question asking if you want to donate a dollar or two for some good cause, usually the children or poor. There is one that asks for two dollars for the literacy fund to help people learn to read. I thought that is what compulsory education was for.
UKer #5700 July 7, 2015 10:14 am 0
In the UK, pubs are ‘licensed premises’ that allow members the public to enter a private area (many old pubs were essentially converted houses) and drink alcohol. The shops/stores that sell alcohol are called ‘off-licences’ (or in popular terminology, an ‘Offy’) in which the public cannot consume what they have bought in the store.The problem here is that people then drink on the street or in parks and that creates its own problems, from litter to violent behaviour that a good pub landlord would know how to deal with.But as a private place, a pub should not be subject to a smoking ban. Same too at the football ground I go to when my team is playing well. The law allows a person to watch and shout and generally behave like a self-contained lunatic but the spectator cannot light a cigarette. I do wonder if the game would stop if anyone was seen smoking in the stands…
jd #5691 July 7, 2015 5:09 am 0
Oh, yeah. Ban cigarettes entirely. You think that we can’t ban marijuana? Wait till you see a bunch of nicotine deprived smokers. I quit smoking many, many, times before I managed to do it, mainly by being confined to a hospital bed and routine blasts of demerol for a few days. I remember though, looking through the couch for change to buy a pack. Going to the local convenience store at 0300 for an emergency restock. Shit, a good nicotine addiction ain’t got much on an opiate addiction.
thezman #5694 July 7, 2015 8:05 am 0
I used to think it as foolish to ban cigarettes, but then the vaping thing started. I know a lot of people who switched from tobacco to vaping. All of them report that it is more enjoyable, cheaper and less debilitating as far as where they can do it. They can sit at their desk vaping and no one is the wiser. I’m not in favor of banning cigarettes, but I think they could get away with it. That said, they need the tax money too much so I suspect we’ll see pro-smoking campaigns soon.
UKer #5690 July 7, 2015 3:24 am 0
The smoking ban in the UK is a farce on any level, not least of which is the NHS depends on huge slices of government cash and gets a lot of that money from taxing the sale of cigarettes. A paradox that our ‘leaders’ don’t want to see.Mind you, since we threw open (sorry, since the EU threw open) our borders to east Europeans it isn’t hard to find our streets have thrown down — but empty — cigarette packets in Russian with what I presume is their version of the anti-smoking message. ‘Nyet Fume, Tovarich,’ or something like that. Also people are still smuggling cigs into the country despite it being blatantly bad for one’s health.The thing I hate most — and I am a non-smoker — is that people can’t smoke in pubs now, which is bizarre. The result of this ludicrous ban is the frustrated smokers go outside and stand at the door. This is fine in country pubs with large car parks but in the older parts of UK towns this means blocking the street for anyone wishing to pass by in a narrow space. More than a few times I have had to negotiate a tightly bunched crowd of semi-drunks smoking furiously outside the pub door. Personally, I’d prefer them to be inside with their mates boozing and smoking happily.On the other hand, smoking is a working class pursuit and thus hated by the elite lefties in power. There are ‘clinics’ and ‘consultations’ for smokers to go and be ‘cured’ though one woman I knew who wanted to give up smoking stopped going to a government-approved quit smoking group as it was run by two people who had never smoked.Like the obese nurses who criticise slimmer people’s weight in the NHS, the lefties at the top think it okay to have people who have never smoked and know what it means to have given up then put in a position to tell others what to do.
thezman #5693 July 7, 2015 8:02 am 0
I’m a non-smoker and I don’t much care for the smell of smoke these days, mostly because I rarely experience it. That said, I don’t care if people smoke. In the US, it does appear we are nearing the point where banning smokes would be simple. From what I gather, the move to e-cigarettes could make it moot. Smokers I know who have switched to e-cigs say it is a better experience for them. They get their nicotine hit without the things they don’t like. They jazz it up with flavorings so that’s another attraction, particularly for the poor.The fascinating thing about the electric cigarettes is people have found quitting them to be much easier than quitting tobacco. There’s no science on it yet, but there’s a suspicion that other elements in tobacco may be what makes nicotine so addictive. Something like 50% of people who transitioned to e-cigs quit altogether in a few months.
UKer #5698 July 7, 2015 10:07 am 0
E-Cigs and the attendant shops/stores are all over the place in places like, er, Rotherham. While the traditional newsagent on the High Street sold sweets (candy), papers and tobacco-filled ciggys, they don’t seem to have anything to do with the e-cigs, so the new trend has spawned its own sub-culture.I was also told, and have no idea if this is true but I don’t doubt the veracity of this, that you are not allowed to buy e-cigs unless you smoke first. So in a weird way, if I was tempted to ‘enjoy’ an e-cig I presume I would have to take up puffing cancer sticks first and then ‘convert.’


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