Smoking Ban looks unstoppable

Photo by Michael Williamson. THE RESTAURANT ASSOCIATION OF WASHINGTON HAS A MARCH AND RALLY TO PROTEST THE CITY'S PROPOSED SMOKING BAN: From the starting point at 14th and K street (Franklin Square) rally participants came down 14th street (at Penn. Ave. in this photo) en route to the nearby Wilson Building on Penn. Ave.

According to a front page story in the Washington Post. As a militant anti-smoker, this is fine with me. Regardless of all the choice arguments made, the fact is that smoking smells and is an irritant, and that's irrespective of all the health arguments. The research on the economics doesn't show much in the way of negative impact, in places like New York City or Howard County, Maryland. And somewhere out there is the research from an inadvertent opportunity--a community passed a ban, had it for about six months, and then was forced by the state to rescind the ban, I think in Colorado--and a subsequent study of morbidity statistics in that county found a substantive reduction in deaths from heart attacks over the period of the smoking ban.

If you think about the impact of such premature deaths on society, and the high incidence of such deaths in the inner city, then you ought to be concerned about this for more than strict wallet-based economism issues. But then I work in hospitality, and I don't like to bartend even though that's where the money is, because I don't have much tolerance for drunks, and I get caught up in inner-dilemma arguments about enabling unhealthy behaviors...

Index Keywords: quality-of-life-advocacy