Smoking Bans Are Just the Beginning

The recent settlement between states and tobacco companies, which resolved numerous lawsuits across the country, was not only a capstone to the debate over the health effects of tobacco but also a windfall to the states and lawyers involved. On its surface, this issue could be easily painted as entirely based on financial motivations and profiteering at the expense of individual liberty. This black and white analysis does not address the numerous other and equally real factors present in what amounts to a government crackdown on liberty and the pursuit of happiness, guaranteed by the Constitution. However, these underlying factors do not distract from the similarity tobacco restrictions and smoking bans have to other areas of personal liberty also under increasing government censure.

In a study completed in 2006, German scientists found that people are more likely to join a profitable system if that system has a mechanism for punishing those who leech from the system without making contribution over a system that lacks this option and leeching is unchecked. Basic human nature obviously plays a role in the majority opinion of the populace that penalizing smokers through the higher prices passed on to them by tobacco companies is a fitting penalty for choosing an activity which causes disease and drives up health care costs. Ostensibly, this means smokers are viewed as receiving an inordinate amount of health care resources as a result of choosing an activity known to cause health problems. While this does not take into account the increased insurance premiums smokers usually pay for their habit, it does show a striking willingness of the general population to accept government intervention in areas of personal liberty if that intervention punishes those viewed as leeching from the system.

Yet, the test of that willingness is fast approaching as the government has apparently viewed one series of successful intervention to be permission for more. Whether it was mandatory seatbelt use, smoking bans in private restaurants, or helmet laws for motorcyclists, the cherry-picked exercise of municipal authority over individual rights affected only small segments of the population or were viewed as so beneficent that critics were quickly branded as advocates of death. While similar labels were applied to smoking-rights proponents, the focus of the country’s attention on what the government will limit next is shifting to an area of far greater effect on the average consumer.

By reaping a financial reward from the penalization of an industry whose product was deemed dangerous, there is little incentive for governments to not take a staked interest in new litigation against fast food restaurants and “junk food” manufacturers. In giving into the demands of a free-market economy and providing the people what they want, these industries now face the possibility of similar financial sanctions as were negotiated by tobacco companies.

The possible penalization of fast food restaurants fulfills a slippery-slope prediction made in the initial days of the tobacco settlement. Critics wondered whether allowing such a major intrusion by government into an area of personal liberty, especially when the financial stakes were so high, would result in government viewing the punishment of industries which produce dangerous products as a new source for revenue. Given the speed at which the litigation against major fast food chains is progressing, it would appear the answer is on the horizon.

However, it must be emphasized that the action the government has taken thus far does have a positive effect for the health of the citizens involved. The question must then be to what extend government should parent the population and whether a massive financial interest in the outcome of litigation should alone preclude the government from this role. The answer to the latter would appear to also answer the former.

Government protection of individual liberties is a basic component of the US Constitution. By the same token, a balance of individual rights must also be maintained in order to preserve the rights of the whole. In taking steps to intervene in personal choice when an obvious and massive financial boon is to be gained by governing officials, the end result is an unchecked role of government, which appeals to the same basic human nature for greed as is the choice to play a game wherein cheaters are punished. This severely oversteps government’s boundaries and sets the stage for the Orwellian type of society long feared from other aspects of civil authority.

In effect, the government actually provided the very litmus test necessary to determine whether it is acting in the best interests of the population or merely those of a select few who stand to profit. Financial gains from successful litigation against industries manufacturing harmful products should fall under legislative earmarks for pre-determined purposes chosen by popular referendum. This prevents special interest groups from having too large a say in who gets what portion of the jackpot a successful lawsuit can yield. At the same time and with no financial incentive for interested parties connected to the government’s pursuit of these lawsuits, battles will be chosen more wisely and their necessary resources used more carefully.

Yet this does not address the extent to which the government can mandate proper health for the citizenry. Penalizing tobacco companies does not take cigarettes from the shelf, as consumers demand the product despite warnings of health effects. In banning smoking from public and private areas, the government has again overstepped its boundaries. The difference is a successful counter-solution will not have the same major popular support as would a check on the manner in which government uses litigation windfalls. Instead, it will require an equal act of lobbying on the part of small business owners and civil rights advocates who possess strong economic data to support the assertion that smoking bans hurt businesses. History has shown us the only voice a government will hearken to on a consistent basis is one that speaks with dollars and cents as the words.

Unfortunately, this battle will not begin anytime soon. Though predictions can be reasonably made about what losses businesses will suffer as a result of a smoking ban within a municipality, only multiple years of data and analysis will be enough to successfully overturn those bans.

In the pursuit of happiness, the citizenry must accept a limited governmental role in protecting the general welfare. Those limitations can only be imposed by votes among constituents to gain the attention of legislators. Pushing back that intervention further still, in the form of repealing bans on smoking among privately owned businesses will require an education of the population by those business owners and the economic data they collect. The optimistic end result will be the continued vigilance of elected government against threats to the health of society balanced against a nearly sacred right of liberty to choose some actions others consider dangerous.