Leave smoking policies up to restaurant owners
Friday, February 4th, 2011
Anti-smoking advocates are at it again – delivering the right message the wrong way.
No argument on the message:
Smoking is bad for your health.
But government intervention to reduce or stop a person’s tobacco use flies in the face of America’s core value, individual freedom. Monday’s Gazette carried a story about the American Lung Association’s tobacco control report card for North Carolina.
The state scored “F” – no surprise given the importance of tobacco in the economic history of our state. As you also would guess, the lung association’s scoring methodology stacks in favor of government intervention into the personal lives of its citizens.
A lung association spokesperson made no bones about the intent of the report card, saying its real reason is to influence the people who make public policy.
A host of anti-smoking advocates now want to achieve their goals by increasing the tax on cigarettes by $1 or more. They intend to push for the increase in this year’s General Assembly session.
The current cigarette tax in North Carolina is 45 cents, $1 less than the national average.
The Gaston County Board of Health has named reducing tobacco use as one of three priorities for the county. Gaston has a higher smoking rate for adults and more deaths attributable to smoking than North Carolina as a whole. The county has, however, seen considerable improvement in the percentage of adult smokers – from 33.3 percent to 23.7 percent – in the past five years.
To its credit, the health department worked with several Gaston restaurants who volunteered to go smoke-free before the state forced the issue last January. Key word: volunteered. That’s the right way to send this message.
(Interestingly, the health department itself didn’t go totally tobacco-free until Jan. 1 of this year.)
Deciding to be smoke-free — or not — is a choice best left up to restaurant owners who have business to win or lose based on their decisions. But North Carolina lawmakers, influenced by the anti-tobacco advocates, snatched that freedom by forcing restaurants to be smoke-free.
Will legislators once again bow to special interest wishes by attempting to control behavior, this time through taxation?
How much tax would it take to stamp-out smoking? A dollar? Two dollars? More?
Will an out-right ban on tobacco products be next? What will that do? Like illegal drugs do now and illegal whiskey did during Prohibition, it will drive transactions underground where purchases are made in dangerous, often life-threatening, circumstances.
As long as other states have lower prices on tobacco products, there will be a loss of revenue for merchants, particularly in border counties such as Gaston. People will drive across state lines to make their purchases and bring back cheaper goods for others. Don’t believe it? Ask older folks about the way cigarettes flew over the state line as travelers passed through North Carolina when cigarettes here were cheaper than anywhere in the country.
The lung association spokesman made it clear that the tax hike is only one strategy in the assault on smoking. Next up: smoking bans in the workplace, in retail establishments, in private schools.
Already, most of these places have decided on their own to go smoke-free. They made the decisions because they believed it was in their best interest. Had smoking enhanced their business, in a tobacco shop for example, they should be free to decide in that direction, too.
Government has no right to dictate behavior in any private establishment, even in the name of wellness, as anti-smoking advocates now claim. Freedom means people are free to make even bad choices.
We urge our lawmakers to refrain from supporting any attempt to limit the freedom of North Carolina citizens. It’s the wrong way to send even the right message.

