Another Smoking Ban Issue

This is a post especially for local readers.  Even for those living outside Liberty, though, there's a greater point at stake, so don't think this doesn't apply to you, too.  It's only a matter of time.  Anyway, here's a message from a local business owner that a friend sent me to share:

Many of you are aware that the Liberty City Counsel has been debating an important issue over the last two years regarding a Smoking Ban.

The City Counsel has a few different proposals. My concern as a business owner is the prohibition of smoking in Bars and Restaurants. This will affect only few businesses in Liberty. However, the effect will be dramatic.

This could put small businesses out of business and find several employees out of work, employees that have families that depend on them to provide a sustainable living. When non-smoking advocates speak of the yearning for bars and restaurants to be non-smoking, they assume that those same businesses will still be there. Unfortunately, that doesn't always happen.

Use Kansas City as an example; several small businesses have closed their doors and have lost everything they have work so hard to create. Big corporate companies have continued, but many small businesses have shut down.

As a consumer I have choices of where I spend my money. I do not need government deciding that for me.

City Counsel is days away from making a decision that will impact our community dramatically. Next Monday this comes to a vote and we will have a Smoking Ordinance. The impact will be determined by the extent of the ordinance.

Please take a couple of minutes out of your busy schedule and send Mayor Steinkamp and the City Counsel an email. Let them know how you feel. We need as much support as possible.

I've blogged on this very topic before, but it bears recapping again.  I'm not a smoker.  I don't like being around smoke.  I don't generally go to restaurants where smoking is allowed.  But I emphatically believe that restaurant owners should be able to allow smoking in their establishments.

It's not an issue of public health because this is private property.  Since when does the government get to dictate what a private citizen does on his or her private property?  And don't run down the trail of is-everything-legal-just-because-it's-on-private-property...that's a completely different argument.  If smoking was actually illegal, that would be a valid argument (one I would agree with).  If smoking is so bad, then it should be outlawed altogether, like meth or cocaine...but since it's not, any efforts to impose smoking ordinances on private property are completely unacceptable.  This is nanny state-ism at its thuggish ugliest, and it cannot be allowed.  The government can't legislate stupid or risky decisions.

If a restaurant owner wants to prohibit smoking in his establishment, that's his decision to make.  He'll lose smoking customers, but he'll probably gain non-smoking customers.  The opposite is also true.  That's the beauty of freedom - the restaurant owner can make whichever decision is in the best interest of his own business.  Government should keep its nose completely out of it.  No one is forcing any person to visit that restaurant, so everyone who goes there does so by choice.  Thus, they really don't have much grounds for complaints about the smoke.

So, please do take a moment to contact the Mayor and City Council on this, and feel free to do so even if you don't live here - e-mail addresses for all of them can be found here.  If you're not sure what to say, feel free to copy from the message above and my blog.  I don't mind at all if you use my words, and I would doubt the business owner would, either.  This is important because there's a bigger principle at stake: nothing less than the concept of individual freedom and responsibility.

The particular issue may be something you don't condone or do yourself today -- like smoking -- but once the mentality of legislating stupid or risky decisions sets in, nothing will be safe.  If you don't think it can happen, you'll wake up one day to find out that it already has, and it will then be too late to stop it for the thing you do condone and do yourself.

There's my two cents.