Tennessee's smoking ban costs jobs

As you regular readers (and Tennesseans) would know, Tennessee has a newly implemented smoking ban that went into effect on October 1.

All public health issues aside, the new law has already made an immediate impact on a group of Tennesseans:  the under-21 workers who've now lost their jobs.

I've been opposed to the smoking ban since it was first discussed in the General Assembly.  In the interests of full disclosure, I have previously been a regular smoker, and now consider myself only an infrequent smoker (maybe the total of a pack of cigs in the last 6 months).

The smoking ban is another example of government butting its nose into a situation over which they really have no stake.  While I'll certainly admit from a federalism standpoint that the State has more business dealing with this issue than the Feds, I still don't think it's a situation that requires government involvement.

This is simply another example of government action being taken to make a personal choice more difficult to exercise.  Why?  To effectively ban some conduct/activity it thinks is bad.  It's nanny state action where it's not justified.

Smoking is a personal choice.  Choosing to frequent a business that permits smoking on site is a personal choice.  Choosing to work in a place that allows smoking is a personal choice. 

Except for now, when it's not.

Smoking is a legal activity.  There's no prohibition against using tobacco, if you're at least 18 years old.  Yet, an employer who restricts admission to those that are at least 21 years old, you can't have an employee that's not 21?  An 18 year old bartender, who can buy smokes of his/her own can't work in a nightclub where smoking is allowed? 

Ridiculous, stupid, and arbitrary.  Which, interestingly enough, is what you usually get when the government starts meddling in things it has absolutely no business meddling in.

Comments

[Greg]

Smoking is a personal choice. Choosing to frequent a business that permits smoking on site is a personal choice. Choosing to work in a place that allows smoking is a personal choice.

So you're saying that your personal choice and freedom to smoke trumps my personal choice and freedom to not have to inhale your refuse and increase my odds for cancer??

[Jay Johnson]

Your choice is whether or not to choose to frequent a restaurant/club, whatever that permits smoking.

It's called a free market. If enough customers decide not to go to that location due to its permission of smoking, then they'll change their policy.

So yes, my personal freedom to smoke DOES trump your freedom not to breathe in second hand smoke, if you choose to go to the establishment with the smoking section where I happen to be puffing away.

[Trisha]

Well, Brendan, when you first posted about it, I really couldn't tell what side you fell on (or maybe I didn't pay enough attention, lol). I'm glad you don't support it. I'm NOT a smoker, but I don't support the smoking ban our state just enacted.

[David K.]

Trisha - This was Jay not Brendan posting

Jay -

So yes, my personal freedom to smoke DOES trump your freedom not to breathe in second hand smoke, if you choose to go to the establishment with the smoking section where I happen to be puffing away.

Fine, you can smoke in contained spaces, but stop smoking in public places because I'm damn sick of having to walk through your clouds of cancer gas.

[Wobbly H]

Trisha,

Brenners didn't post this, his blog BFF Jay did. I won't purport to speak for Brenners on this issue, but I'm guessing that, with a wife who has one growing inside her, he's unopposed on at least a pragmatic level.

[Anonynonynony]

I understand that you don't like the smoking ban, Jay, but let's call a spade a spade. The workers lost their jobs not because of a smoking ban, but because of the way that this particular smoking ban was written. Many places have smoking bans that don't have the 21-and-up exception. Or the law could be written to exempt employees from the 21-and-up requirement. It is possible to implement a smoking ban and not have this result. Apparently, Tennessee just wrote its smoking ban in an extra-stupid manner.

[ndlaw2006]

Seems like the job losses have little to nothing to do with the concept of a smoking ban and everything to do with stupid bill drafting.

And if one of the arguments against a minimum wage is true (that most minimum wage workers are seasonal student employees), the particular population of workers affected by the ban isn't exactly a critical economic constituency. Moreover, there are plenty of states where people under 21 can't work in any establishment that sells alcohol, smoking or none. Should we stop issuing liquor licenses too?

[Becky]

Hmmm. This issue is not as simple as "I wanna smoke and I should be able to smoke wherever I want." It really strikes at the heart of what people believe the government's role in society should be and I haven't seen anyone in favor of not having the smoking ban articulate a feasible political philosophy that supports their position. A true, die-hard libertarian might argue that the government has no right to regulate anything, but that really risks running into an endorsement of anarchy (which to me isn't terribly feasible).

I'm not persuaded by Jay's free market argument. The unregulated free market allows for things like child labor and rats in the stew. Most people favor at least some government regulation of industry to prevent the cruelties of a true free market from causing undue public harm. Once you accept the necessity of the government to regulate certain things...like sanitation in meat-packing plants...then it becomes a question of how much the government should regulate, when and why.

Why should the state not have the power to regulate where people smoke?

Jay's answer is that it's an abuse of the state's regulatory power because there's an element of personal choice involved in patronizing smoking establishments. I'm not terribly compelled by that argument because it could be used to justify something like segregation or restrictive housing covenants.

How much liberty are we willing to sacrifice for the public good? How much power should we give to state governments for social control experiments like smoking bans? And how do we know when the government has gone too far?

Why should we draw the regulation line before smoking bans and not after them? Why should Jay's freedom to smoke in a restuarant trump David's freedom to eat wherever he wants without having to breathe in secondhand carcinogens?

I think its indisputable that smokers are being relegated to the corners of society by increasingly hostile legislatures. I'm just not sure that's a bad thing.

[Becky]

Um, that's NOT to imply that Jay supports random shit like housing convenants, but the personal/businessmen's priority argument was used to justify such things. Just wanted to clarify that cuz Jay is super cool!

[Brendan Loy]

Just to build on Becky's comment a bit, I think the reason why other examples of government regulation of the market -- child-labor laws, restrictions on housing covenants, food sanitation requirements, etc. -- are relevant isn't because they are directly equivalent to smoking bans (so please, hold the cries of "straw man!"), but because they demonstrate that there are some instances where we'd all agree that certain compelling interests do indeed trump Jay's philosophical libertarian concerns... and therefore the question that must be asked is whether the prevention of second-hand smoke qualifies as a sufficiently compelling interest. In other words, it isn't enough to recite the philosophical underpinnings of small-government libertarianism; you've gotta go beyond that, because we all agree that the philosophy can sometimes be trumped -- e.g., in the racial covenant situation, or the "rats in the stew" situation -- and so the question isn't whether the philosophy is valid, the question is whether it is applicable to this specific situation.

The "rats in the stew" concept is actually the best analogy, IMHO, because it's the most directly on point. As I wrote previously, I think we'd all agree that if a restaurant fails its health inspection -- not merely gets a bad grade, but fails -- it's perfectly right and proper for the government to shut it down, because it's unsafe for the public to eat there. Yet Jay's logic vis a vis the smoking ban implies that it would be enough to put up signs that say "WE FAILED OUR HEALTH INSPECTION!" and then let the restaurant stay open, and damn the public-health consequences, because after all, "Eating rotten food is a personal choice. Choosing to frequent a business that serves rotting food on site is a personal choice. Choosing to work in a place that serves rotting food is a personal choice."

The question isn't, "Is it ever OK for the government to regulate business in a way that restricts liberty and pre-empts personal choice?" We all know -- if we're being honest with ourselves -- that the answer to that question is "yes, sometimes."

Instead, the proper question to ask is, "Where do we draw the line?" Or, as Becky puts it, "Why should we draw the regulation line before smoking bans and not after them?" I haven't yet heard a compelling answer to that question from the anti-ban crowd, which is why I continue to lean further and further toward the pro-ban camp.

[Alasdair]

Brendan - How about we should draw the line at a Smoking Restriction and before we have a Smoking Ban ?

How about, instead of shutting down a restaurant that has had minor Health Inspection problems, we post the specific problems as a list where potential customers can see 'em, and let the customers decide ... and, before the obvious straw men are erected, if the restaurant uses arsenic salts rather than kosher salt, yes, it can be closed down ... if it has some chipped dishes, then tell customers that, and let the customers decide ...

As for the "rats in the stew", as long as the rats were slaughtered and butchered humanely, and as long as the stew in which the rats are is "Rat Stew", then, yes, you do not ban "rats in the stew" ... isn't "Rat O'Tooey" a well known Repooblican Oirish delicacy ? (innocent Brit smile)