Illinois Smoking Ban

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by jmagnus

Bar and restaurant owners are not stupid. They know what their patrons want. Why let government interfere and decide for them?

Well, as someone who believes wholeheartedly in reducing government interference in our lives, I don't have a problem with the last sentence . . . but the first might be demonstrably false, and indeed your entire argument that relies on "market forces" really doesn't carry too much weight either.

First, for market effects to really push non-smoking bars into the fore, you're relying on the owner to somehow realize the potential for increased profits to an extent that would allow him/her to take the risk of cutting off smokers.

Second, the status quo is a powerful market force in and of itself.

Combining these two, we can see that it would actually be exorbitantly difficult for market forces to drive bar owners to go non-smoking - and that's assuming the bar owners behave rationally (in an economic sense, not literally), and there's really no guarantee there.

How many bar owners have you met? Are they mostly hands-on, or hands-off? It's not like the requirement for owning a bar is a degree in economics.

The real problem here is the thick-line issues related to the government's role in public health. For instance, we assume the government will inspect meat - this is because we don't trust "the market" to weed out companies who deal in tainted meat, or because the forces that would weed them out would require injury to individuals. Currently, every Democratic candidate for President thinks it is the government's responsibility to provide universal health care - and while I don't want to debate the merits of socialized medicine, it's another example of the extent to which the government is explicitly tied to public health.

We have a CDC, we have a Surgeon General - state governments often have similar, as well as health inspectors etc. for bars and restaurants. Banning smoking should likely be viewed as an extension of those services, and not solely as quashing personal freedoms.

It does limit freedoms in one way, but not to the extent that banning smoking in homes would, because of the public health nuisance aspect - by the way, I believe the bans I've seen there are purely for homes with children, which makes the entire issue much more dicey.