As the members of the D.C. City Council debate over the highly controversial restaurant and bar smoking ban, I find myself wondering where I left my pack of Marlboro Lights. New York City is one thing and California is another, but the idea of the capital of the free world infringing on our civil liberties is ... well, in the words of Alanis Morisette, ironic.
Did smokers' rights fly out the window? Furthermore, when did the idea of rights become a game in which for one group to have rights, the other can have none? When I walk into a bar, I feel I should have the right to indulge in both alcohol and tobacco (granted, not the healthiest choices). Both substances are in fact legal, taxed, and large forms of revenue for the City of D.C. - hypocrisy much?
This is all sounding a little too much like Prohibition and the Temperance Movement to me. They too had all the science they could get their hands on, like those sitting on the D.C. Council. Some even believed there was evidence to show that the exhalations of a drinker could poison those in his path. At least we've smartened up since then. Or have we?
This proposed smoking ban is equally voracious and equally hostile to the notion of civil liberties. What about the First Amendment's right to peaceably assemble, the Fourteenth Amendment's right to not have one's ordinary privileges "abridged," the right to private property and the plain American right to be treated equally and not made into a "social outcast" or second-class citizen by the state? Law-abiding, of-age smokers are being sent outside for partaking in something completely legal. If that's not a form of turning someone into a social outcast, I'm not sure what is. Should we throw stones at these smokers as well?
But more than my civil liberties, I'm worried about the thousands of college-aged students employed by these said smoke-friendly restaurants and bars. The Cornell University Center for Hospitality Research did a study recently that indicated 47percent of smokers said they avoid smoke-free restaurants and 59 percent say they actively seek out establishments that allow it.
In a city like DC, where another bar is just a ten-minute ride down the Orange Line, smokers that would rather have a cigarette with their adult-beverage than stand outside in god-knows-what kind of weather are going to hop on that Metro and head to Northern Virginia. D.C. will lose revenue and in turn jobs. Simply look at the two largest areas of the country that have banned smoking: California and New York City.
According to "Smoking Laws and their Differential Effects on Restaurants, Bars and Taverns," liquor pouring establishments are more than twice as likely to experience revenue declines than non-liquor-pouring establishments. Sales tax revenue from liquor pouring establishments grew 15 percent less than the rest of the economy after the enactment of smoking bans (California Board of Equalization), more than 1,000 bars and restaurants that serve alcohol closed in the first year of California's smoking ban (American Beverage Institute) and sales of wine and spirits in the New York area declined 40 percent in the first six months their smoking ban was in effect, eliminating almost 7,000 retail hospitality positions (Empire Restaurant and Tavern Association study). The list goes on and on.
While I can understand the argument that smoke-friendly bars discriminate against workers with allergies to smoke, we must remember there are numerous other jobs that discriminate against those with health problems and what they were dealt in the gene pool. For example, I could never work in a veterinary office because I'm allergic to cats. My grandmother could never work as a concert pianist because she has arthritis. Could my brother also accuse the NBA of being discriminatory because he's only 5'9"? Maybe the D.C. City Council should also propose the ban of cats, pianos and professional basketball. Of course not, that would be silly. But the idea of banning smoking itself is discriminatory; it's discriminatory against those paying customers who don't want to be sent to a snowy stoop next door to the bar where they're just trying to enjoy their beer and cigarette.
I don't think anyone against the D.C. smoking ban is so much for smoking as they are against governmental control of smoking. With the recent death of one of my own personal heroes, Peter Jennings, I realize more than ever people need to quit. But this D.C. ban will do nothing to punish the big tobacco companies that should be punished, nor will it stop the smokers from puffing. The cigarettes not smoked in D.C. bars will be smoked: at home, outside on the street, or in a Northern Virginia bar.
The idea that a city so diverse and in-tune with the rights and liberties afforded to its citizens is willing to infringe on the right to smoke in public places is disappointing. I would expect more.
