Choice Goes Up in Smoke

The City Council-approved ban on smoking in D.C. establishments goes into effect today.

The provisions of the ban implemented today cover the dining areas of restaurants and most indoor workplaces. The ban provides exemptions for outdoor areas, hotel rooms, retail tobacco outlets and cigar bars. In 2007, it will expand to include bars, bar areas of restaurants and nightclubs...

Personally, I enjoy having dinner in a restaurant without cigarette smoke wafting over a thin partition between the smoking and non-smoking sections, or coming home from a night out with friends and not having to wash the stale smell of smoke out of my clothes immediately. I like not having to deal with smoke. But this ban is not about smoke. It’s about infringement of property rights. It’s about choice.

The City Council is legislating what private businesses should be deciding for themselves. Proprietors of privately-owned businesses have the right to ban smoking in their establishments if that's how they want to do business. It’s a choice.

We as customers determine how important the avoidance of secondhand smoke is to us by deciding which establishments we will support with our business and which we will not. It’s a choice.

Advocates of the smoking ban say it's for the "greater good," that non-smoking employees and patrons suffer by being forced to inhale secondhand smoke in a public establishment. But no one is forced to work anywhere. No one is forced to patronize any establishment. It’s a choice.

This is not a ban on smoking. It’s a ban on choice.