EDITORIAL: To Smoke or Not Smoke is Not a Government Question

By Lancaster New Era, Pa.

Jun. 1–The Pennsylvania legislature is poised to consider transforming Pennsylvania into the 16th smoke-free workplace state.

Legislators should think long and hard before they require users of tobacco — a legal substance — to abstain inside most buildings.

The House and Senate legislation would prohibit smoking in nearly all workplaces. That includes not only all businesses, but restaurants, bars, bowling alleys, sports arenas and many other places.

About the only interior spaces in which Pennsylvanians would be able to smoke under this legislation are their own homes, private clubs and tobacco shops.

House Bill 1489, which would establish smoke-free workplaces throughout the commonwealth, is scheduled to come up for a vote in the House Health and Human Services Committee next week.

Senate Bill 602, which covers essentially the same territory, also is moving toward committee consideration.

Sponsors make a strong case for the legislation on both medical and economic grounds.

The medical argument is simple.

Nonsmokers should not have to deal with secondhand smoke, a proven carcinogen that is particularly harmful to children. This legislation effectively would keep smokers from polluting the air of non-smokers.

Sponsors also have new ammunition to ban smoking on economic grounds.

A New York City report one year after a smoking ban was instituted there has found that business tax receipts in restaurants and bars are up 8.7 percent.

In fact, the number of bars in the state has increased. Also, nearly a quarter of those surveyed said they are eating out more often because of the smoking ban, while only 4 percent said they are eating out less.

So what’s not to like about a smoking ban?

There is an elemental reason not to embrace an outright ban. Smoking tobacco is legal and trying to end a legal practice by government dictate when alternatives exist is not a good idea. The failure of alcohol prohibition is the best example of that.

And there are alternatives.

Many private workplaces already have outlawed smoking, largely because employees who don’t smoke demanded the change and because companies discourage smoking to reduce health insurance payouts to sick workers.

Why require all workplaces to do what most have done voluntarily?

Workplaces that continue to allow smoking have their reasons. Small “mom and pop” businesses, for example, may employ two or three smokers who don’t care if they pollute one another’s air.

In that case, why should the government interfere?

As for restaurants, taverns and other public places, why must government run the show? Most restaurants now have smoking and nonsmoking sections. Some taverns are instituting similar situations.

If customers won’t eat or drink in a smoky place, that place will change its rules or lose business.

Customer demand, rather than government command, should determine how smokers are treated in public places.

Smoking is unhealthy for smokers as well as nonsmokers who are exposed to smoke. Everyone recognizes that.

But as long as tobacco is legal, it hardly makes sense to make it illegal to smoke it.

State government has more pressing things to do — such as reforming property taxes and repairing Pennsylvania’s infrastructure — things that citizens cannot do for themselves.

Government does not need to be a smoking nag.

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Copyright (c) 2006, Lancaster New Era, Pa.

Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.

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