I believe that anti-smoking laws are acceptable as Libertarian policy.
They reinforce party principles and they make good political sense.
One of the prime directives of the Libertarian party is that people
"have the right to live in whatever manner they choose, so long as
they do not forcibly interfere with the equal right of others to live
in whatever manner they choose."
If you smoke around me, you are breaking one of the major principles
of the Libertarian party.
It's true, the burning agents in a cigarette burns my eyes and nose.
If you smoke, I am not free to choose where I go: I must stay upwind
or 100 yards of you. I can't even drive behind you. If you smoke in a
public place, you forcibly interfere with my right to be anywhere near
that same place.
Since Libertarians do not want to interfere with individual's rights,
I would therefore argue that the California Smoke-Free Workplace Law
that went into effect in restaurants in 1995 and in bars in 1998
essentially put into law one of the Libertarian party's principles.
I thought it was a breath of fresh air.
Some Libertarians say that we shouldn't have this law and that the
free market should decide. Because of the nature of cigarettes, I
disagree in this case. Most bar owners and restaurateurs smoke and
thereby didn't have a problem with allowing smoking in their
establishments. Because of this, non-smokers couldn't choose between
restaurants or bars, they had to choose between going out and not
going out. That wasn't much of a choice.
Perhaps another reason restaurateurs didn't prohibit smoking was FUD
(fear, uncertainty, and doubt). They certainly thought that banning
smoking would harm their business. Indeed, this is what the tobacco
lobbyists would have had you believe, even though the majority doesn't
smoke.
Once the law was passed and the smoke cleared, the majority did speak.
Bar sales over the next year (1999) jumped 15%. As it turned out, this
law made good economic sense for the bars and restaurants of
California.
Anti-smoking laws make good political sense too. In 2001, only 17.4%
of the adults in California smoked. Anti-smoking laws thereby
represent the will of the people, rather than the special-interest
groups (which Libertarians abhor).
It was a pity that the Libertarian party endorsed one of these
special-interest groups this October.
2001 17.4 82.6
http://www.breath-ala.org/html/work_economics.html
http://www.tturc.uci.edu/t
http://www.dhs.cahwnet.gov/tobacco/
