The unbridled nanny state rides again

I had a chat with a friend today, who happens to be a Democrat who will be taking a chair on the City-County Council next month.

When I mentioned that I would probably not be speaking to my Democrat friends if they came out for another smoking ban, she did not take it particularly well. Although she smiled and did not raise her voice, I know this because first she tried to use the second-hand smoke argument on me, then discarded it and went to "Well, gee, should we just lift all speed limits and let people drive as fast as they want, too?"

Sure, why not? Let's do that, and while we're at it, let's stop requiring placarding for hazardous cargo, too. I love watching hazardous chemicals explode on the freeway.

The problem is, Ms. Councilperson-elect, the two cases aren't analogous. Speed limits on city streets make sense, if only to slow people down to reasonable rates (40 in a 30, while it's speeding, isn't necessarily always unsafe). I'm not so sure they make sense on highways, but try to drive the speed limit on any highway these days and not get run over. So why have speed limit laws if they're honored more in the breach than in the observance? On the other hand, speed limits at least limit the number of morons driving 80+, because even scofflaws know there might be a state trooper hiding over that next rise.

But that's not the worst of it -- if you really want to analogize, maybe we should stop people from driving altogether because it's dangerous to their health. I mean, that's what you tell people about smoking. Sure, let's force everybody back onto mass transit, where we -- well, YOU, I guess -- can control access and movement, just like back in...well, I don't want to Godwinize this argument, after all. But it's a fact that smoking was frowned upon in Nazi Germany.

Smoking bans, however, hit businesses right where they live. I know people who won't patronize non-smoking bars. At the same time, that's about all I have left, because I can't deal with the smoke due to having asthmatic, chronic bronchitis. One lungful of the air at the Elbow Room on most weeknights and I'm on 10 days of antibiotics. But I can hang out at Sahm's all night long, and I don't begrudge those of my friends and acquaintances who hang at the Elbow. (I even go over there once in a while and eat in the restaurant half, where smoking isn't allowed.)

My feeling is that smoking bans are just one more way for nanny-staters who have passionate beliefs that certain things shouldn't be allowed to satisfy that craving most such types have for control. And many of us have just about reached the limit of what we're willing to be told we can and cannot do. We're already bombarded day and night by all media with public service ads telling us how bad smoking is and how you can get help to quit. We're told (well, lied to) that smoking causes health care costs to go up. (It actually doesn't, because smokers tend to die before they get to the last few years of life when 90% of lifetime health care expenditures happen.)

I don't smoke.

But I'll defend to the death any establishment that wants to allow its customers the freedom to smoke. The feigned concern from anti-smokers about the people who are "forced" to work under such conditions doesn't faze me at all -- if you don't want to work in a smoking establishment, you are free to find another line of work or a non-smoking establishment in which to work.

Mark my words: If we let comprehensive smoking bans pass, the next thing they will be coming for will be your liquor. And after that, your guns. Nanny-staters are insidious.

And they don't have much of a sense of humor, either.

By the way: I don't have much respect left for the Republicans on the Council, or the Mayor, either. Their last-minute try to enact a comprehensive smoking ban shows that they are just as bought-in to the nanny-state as the Democrats who will be replacing them in the majority. And the legislature needs to be shown the door (and the tar, feathers and rails) if they pursue a similar ban at the state level in the upcoming session.