Majority Rights

Here's a good liberal letter from Portland, arguing that majority rights should prevail in the debate over indoor smoking on private property:

I can't wait until Oregon's workplaces are all smoke-free. It's been a long time since a majority of Americans smoked or wanted a smoking work environment.

Creating smoke-free workplaces is in the interest of the health and happiness of employees, and has the support of a majority of Oregonians. Businesses benefit from healthy employees, and Oregon will stay nationally competitive by supporting an idea whose time has come. MIKE MERRILL Northwest Portland

What do you want to bet that people like this would argue that majority rights should not be the deciding factor over same-sex marriage? It's hardly courageous to argue that majority rights ought to trump the minority's when it's an idea you're in favor of, but then argue the opposite when it isn't.

More on Smoking

Lest anyone get me wrong, I should say that I despise smoking. I have never smoked and I never will. It has brought significant damage, and even death, to members of my family who did smoke.

I will not patronize an establishment that allows smoking, period.

So I do not view these kind of articles very happily: "Wall Street Finds a Lob to Like About Tobacco," NY Times, Jan 31.

Personally I wish all the tobacco companies went out of business tomorrow and that all smokers voluntarily quit today. Smokers may well be all quitting in the next couple of decades, in the US at least. I might well bet that in 20 years it will be very unusual to still see a smoker in the US. (If nothing else, they will probably penalize it heavily once government begins paying for all of our health care.) Internationally, though, is another problem, and that is going to be where tobacco companies make their money.

It is a vile habit and one of the most destructive legal practices allowed. But it is still legal, and people still do have a right to damage their health if they wish (we all do it in our own ways, anyway). As long as it is legal, it ought to be left alone to be handled by the private market, and left alone by meddling governments.

Smoking Bans

Of course, the good nanny-state liberals of Portland, Oregon cannot stand for smoking in public places -- whatever free-willed individuals find enjoyable must be sacrificed to the alter of political correctness. And so Oregon legislators seem determined to enact an indoor smoking ban in bars and taverns, because of course the free-willed citizens of Oregon must not be required to have to choose for themselves whether or not they will patronize an establishment based on its smoking policies -- no, the smoking policies of the establishment must be bent to comply with the majority view.

Smoking has been going on in bars and restaurants for as long as tobacco has been around, which goes back thousands of years. I despise tobacco smoke as much as the next fellow--both for its horrific stink and for the health effects on those who stupidly smoke it. (I am still open on the question of haphazard exposure to second-hand smoke, except for the year-after-year complete inclusion suffered by people like waitresses, bartenders, and smoker's spouses. But, of course, all these people can chose to be elsewhere.)

But stupidity is still a right in this country, and bar and restaurant patrons should be free to excersize their stupid habit if the owner of the establishment agrees. He agrees knowing full well that it may drive nonsmoking patrons to other businesses, which is the way it ought to be in a free and capitalistic environment.

But not, not in Oregon. Here all free choice must bend to the popular will. And so, owners of private business establishments will most likely soon be required to extinguish all smoking materials, because of course we cannot trust adults to make choices for themselves -- choices of whether or not to smoke, of whether or not to allow smoking in their private establishment, and of whether or not to patronize an establishment based on their smoking policies.

No, as of right now (3:20 pm), 78.5% of the "good citizens" of Oregon would have smoking banned in bars and taverns, according to the online poll in the Oregonian (which, being an online poll, is complete scientific crapola).

Isn't it strange -- 78.5% is about equal to the percentage of nonsmokers in the state, as well. It doesn't really seem that the state's citizens really believe in rights for anyone but themselves.

This, despite doubts that the "science" of secondhand smoke it all it's been advertised to be. Most of us have been exposed to secondhand smoke at some point in our lives, and although it made our clothes smell like shit it hardly left us keeling over in tobacco-inspired cancers.

But the question remains: shouldn't free-thinking adults be allowed to decide for themselves whether or not they will allow smoking in their places of business? And, shouldn't free-thinking adults be able to decide for themselves whether they will patronize a business based on its smoking policies? What's the problem with this?

Not, apparently, in Nanny-land, where we all must live the same, politically correct lives. Really, when you think about it, it's the perfect philosophy for Pretentious Portland. And for the whole pretentious state of Oregon as well.