A rather frightening practice has been circulating from city to city in the Kansas City metropolitan area. Cities are passing a law that eliminates choices and basic human freedoms promised by the U.S. Constitution.
Roughly three years ago, Lawrence passed a ban that disallows smoke in indoor facilities. This includes restaurants and bars.
I don’t smoke. Personally, I think the habit is disgusting. In fact, if I know a friend of mine has been smoking recently, I choose not to speak with him so I don’t have to smell his nasty breath and look at his yellowed teeth.
But the freedom to smoke is promised to us by the U.S. Constitution.
The city of Lawrence, despite that its residents voted and approved the law, is violating that right.
One man is attacking the unconstitutional law head on. Lawrence bar owner Dennis Steffes is defending the right for Lawrence business owners to make the choice whether they want smoking in their establishments in the Kansas Supreme Court. The decision is still pending.
The purpose of the Lawrence smoking ban is to eliminate people’s exposure to secondhand smoke.
It is no secret secondhand smoke is hazardous to our health. Secondhand smoke has been linked to cancer, the narrowing of arteries and death, among many other ailments. In short, secondhand smoke is bad.
Yet the precedent this ban sets is even more dangerous than secondhand smoke.
First, the ban eliminates a business owner’s choice of allowing or not allowing smoke in his building. This especially harms such businesses as bars and restaurants, which provide indoor smoking as a convenience to its smoking customers. Profits could easily be lessened.
The United States is a democracy where capitalism is supposed to reign free.
It is a society that celebrates the entrepreneur.
The ban flagrantly violates the laissez-faire practice that is supposed to protect business, enterprise and competition in the United States.
The city has no right to intervene in how a local business operates, save setting basic health and safety regulations that are essential to human health and fair labor practices.
But this ban does not fall under the health and safety umbrella, as secondhand smoke can be avoided by choice.
A similar law would be prohibiting a restaurant or bar from serving alcohol. If a patron consumes too much booze and drives, there is a good chance he will get in a wreck and injure or kill another person.
Utilizing the same logic as the smoking ban, because a person who consumes alcohol at a bar presents a risk to another person, then alcohol, too, should be banned.
See you later, Brother’s, Louise’s and Fatso’s.
The only difference: People can avoid smokers, whereas they can’t avoid drunken drivers.
Business owners are not the only people who lose their freedom to choose. Prior to the ban, non-smokers and smokers alike had the choice to patronize a restaurant or bar that allowed smoking.
Now that choice is no longer present.
The local citizenry are the victims.
We are educated and informed citizens, and we should have the freedom to choose which restaurant we want to eat at with our families or drink at with our friends.
If smoke bothers us, then we can simply choose not to patronize a restaurant or bar that allows smoking.
It all comes down to our freedom to choose what we want and what we do not want, and the Lawrence government should not be holding our hands – we can make our own decisions.
Although the smoking ban protects us from avoidable secondhand smoke, the precedent the law creates is like a termite infestation – our foundation of freedom slowly is eaten away until there is nothing left but rot and waste.
The problem is not that we might choose to take our families to places where secondhand smoke will be present, but that we cannot make the choice not to.
Let’s actually put our collegiate activism toward something that matters by supporting Steffes.