I’m not a smoker. I used to be, but I quit two years ago. Now I can’t stand smoking. I try it every once and a while, and I always feel worse for wear afterward. I don’t particularly like being around second-hand smoke either. I don’t like the smell of old smoke–it’s stale, and dirty, a sort of yellowish smell. Besides that, second hand smoke awakens the old addict in me. Makes me want to light up, inhale….

So you might think that I’d be all for the ban on smoking in Flagstaff bars. After all, where better to encounter second hand smoke than a bar? What could be more of an inhibition killer than a smoky bar and a few drinks? When I did smoke, I always did so the most when I was out drinking, and I think this is the case for most smokers. Nothing tops off a cold beer or a shot of whiskey better than a cigarette. Nothing.

Now when I go to the bars, it’s nice. There’s no smoke. No temptation (or very little) exists to bum a smoke off a friend, especially when it’s cold and smoking requires you to walk out of the nice, warm bar and into the frigid outdoors, to smoke huddled in a group on the side of a snowy street. I like that. I like the fact that I’m not faced with much of an option. I like that the bar doesn’t smell like smoke. There’s a lot of things I like about smoke-free bars in Flagstaff.

But I still think it’s wrong. I think the City of Flagstaff has done a grave injustice by banning smoking in our bars. You may say, well plenty of cities, large and small, have banned smoking. It’s the natural course of events across the country and even the world! I say, so much for the rest of the world. This is America, and in America our businesses have rights that they aren’t afforded elsewhere, at least in theory. Our business owners should have the right to chose whether or not smoking is allowed in their bars. Where children aren’t present, and only consenting adults, there is no valid reason why smoking shouldn’t be perfectly acceptable. It’s legal to smoke, after all.

The Critic

Ah, the critic will say, but second-hand smoke causes cancer! Well, quite simply put, that’s a bogus statement. The original EPA study was thrown out by a Federal court. It was a weak study with a pre-conceived agenda that even in its furthest reaches could not prove that second hand smoke leads to cancer.

Beyond this, the smoking ban is bad for business, both here in Flagstaff and abroad. It’s even worse in towns back East and in larger populations where some nearby cities don’t ban smoking and thus draw in a great deal of extra bar-goers who prefer, reasonably, to smoke while they drink. This is not as great an issue in Flagstaff, however the principle of the matter remains: banning smoking is a violation of our rights as citizens, and is an example of Big Government stepping in where they have no business interfering.

The argument that workers suffer undue health risks is a poor one for two reasons:

The Reasons

Firstly, those workers have a choice as to where they work. I never wanted to work at a bar because I didn’t want to work that late at night. So I didn’t work at a bar. Another person may not want to work at a bar because of second-hand smoke–so they can work somewhere else. Many people prefer not to mine coal because it’s cramped, dangerous, grueling work. So they choose not to. Should the government ban all coal-mining because it’s dangerous? No! And second-hand smoke has never been proven to be anywhere near to as dangerous as coal-mining.

Secondly, the health risk workers actually face working at a bar is minimal at best. Studies have shown that people who live around second-hand smoke consume at most a total equivalent of six cigarettes a year. You get more carcinogens just living in a big city and breathing smog-crusted air on a daily basis.

The notion that government has the right to take rights away from business owners and adult citizens is absurd. The power of the City Council should never be so over-reaching. America has been founded on freedom of choice, and Flagstaffians should have the right to chose where they work, eat, drink, sleep, etc. If there are enough non-smokers that don’t want to be in a smoky bar, well they can head to a bar that has banned smoking. If the market is there, someone will surely provide a place for those people to go. If it’s not there–if there really aren’t enough people who would prefer a non-smoking bar to a smoking bar–then what the heck right does our government have forcing this legislation down our throats?

I’d drink at a smoke-free bar, but I would never, ever say that my “likes” are more important than your rights.

Kain's major subjects of focus at NeoConstant are international strategy; support of Israel; the failure of the international community to stop genocide; the spread of American power and democracy; historical analysis; and current events both domestically and abroad. He writes here, Newsvine and his blog, IndiePundit.