Magnifisyncopathological

Sad.

Excellent posting. I agree 100%. Most people just don't get what's been going on, but I have seen it passing before my eyes gradually over the last 15 years. I remember when I was a kid and we went to Canada for a vacation. The first thing I saw when crossing the border was a "Buckle your seat belt! It's the Law!" I asked my Dad why they have a law in Canada and not in the USA. He said that the reason is because we are a much more free country than Canada and believe that people have the right to choose between right and wrong. Well now 20 years later every state in the country has a seat belt law. We have helmet laws, smoking bans, leash laws, water restrictions, gun bans, and even laws about how many people and what age of people can sit in the back of a pickup truck for godsake!

The libs test these things in the areas where they have activist judges or a bunch of Socialist voters and then they point to these places to convince the more passive people to accept them in other places. I can see what's next. It's fast food restrictions, smoking and drinking when your pregnant, govt home inspections, and their grand prize of taking away all of our guns!

Stay angry and keep up the fight.

I forgot to mention that I don't smoke and don't own a gun. In case anyone was thinking that I was just mad because I was some redneck. Most people say, "You don't smoke. So why do you care?" I care because sooner or later their gonna get to something I do that is not right in their view of how I should live my life. Is it stupid to smoke and drink when your pregnant? Yes. Is it stupid to ride a motorcycle without a helmet? Yes. But I should be allowe to be stupid. Many passive people don't understand the distinction between what is wrong and stupid and what should be enforced as a law.

I am completely against the ordinance mostly because I was in a succesful band playing in the Austin Music scene, but now im am stricly limited losing most of my paying gigs on sixth street because me and my bandmates are under 18! I'm trying desperately with some of the venue owners to find a loophole if anyone has any ideas for me please post them.

I wonder where you come down on the issue of peeing in public? Should I be allowed to empty my bladder anywhere I want? I mean piss is sterile and poses no immediate health threat. Would it bother you if the finer spray droplets drifted onto the food you were eating?

In your article about consent to search you said it wasn't good enough that the government said you could turn around and leave, refusing the search... but here you seem to argue that doing so is good enough for someone who doesn't want to be subjected to others second-hand smoke in public. You are arguing that I should be denied access to public places (because I want to refuse to be subjected to second-hand smoke) but I shouldn't be allowed to vote on it, because the issue should never be raised in the first place, a priori.

You further seem to imply that just because 95% of the people FAILED to participate, that should invalidate the actions of those that actually bothered to participate in the process. And you base this objection on the fact that you didn't like the outcome. Puzzling.

Whenever one individual's actions impose on anothers rights, that is when the government has the right and responsibility to act. Unfortuantely, most situations aren't black and white and the rights of each individual have to be balanced. I don't believe that 'society as a whole' factors into the equation in anything other than emotional arguments however, it comes down to interactions between individuals.

But there *are* rights on both sides of this issue to be considered and you seem to present it entirely one-sided.

I enjoyed your web-site though, never a bad thing to discuss the issues.

Dimsum, the simplest answer is that a person should not urinate upon someone's property unless they have the property owner's permission. I would indeed be pissed (ha!) if someone took a leak on my burger. I would be doubly so if it was intentional. As for the "public property" chimera, I do not consider the City of Austin or any other government entity to be legitimate property owners of the objects they possess.

Regarding consent to searches on NYC public transportation ( http://www.drizzten.com/blargchives/001271.html for the curious ) and consent to enter a private smoking-permitted establishment, there is a difference. That difference once again comes down to property. I didn't make this clear in my article because I wanted to focus on the implications of the shirt Mr. Lu is selling.

Taxation, eminent domain, and war are the primary methods governments use to obtain property. I view those methods as, at their core, theft and aggression. Just as I am not the rightful owner of a stereo purchased with stolen money, governments are not the rightful owners of the property they possess. This concept is explained further here: http://blog.mises.org/blog/archives/002502.asp In the case of donations, the matter becomes a tad trickier, but it is irrelevant for the moment.

When a bar owner says smoking is allowed in his business, he is exercising legitimate control over his property. When a government says some people using public transport must consent to a search or leave, the government is attempting to exercise the rights of a property owner when it is not a legitimate owner in the first place.

The concept of public places screws up a good deal of the discussion. The fact that someone is willing to allow others into and onto his property does not mean that property suddenly becomes a public place, different in nature to what it was previously. Furthermore, even if the nature of that place changed, it does not follow that a screened portion of a population living within an arbitrarily-defined geographical boundary has any right to decide what the owner can and cannot do with that property.

I pointed out the voting numbers just to show how ridiculous the argument is that these kinds of elections are "democratic" by any fair definition of the term. If everyone in the world but myself and the bar owners voted to ban smoking on their property, the result would still be wrong. There is nothing mystical about a vote.

I agree that when someone's actions infringe on another's rights, a response to that violation is in order. However, you're going to have to define what a "right" is and what rights humans have before we can continue onward. I can tell right now with your "balance of rights" language that you and I are going to disagree on this, because the entire concept of a right means something that should not, should never, be compromised or diminished.

And unless I haven't made it openly clear, I am not a supporter of government in any form. I think individuals can work out the bulk of their differences on their own without the aid of state coercion. Of course, that implies a vast redirection of responsibility away from the collective and towards individuals...and that scares the living shit out of most people.

Hopefully, you'll be back to talk further. Thanks for the compliment.

Bravo, Drizz... bravo... I've read much of your comments on smoking bans, and I couldn't agree more. Though I am not an anarchist at heart, and I did vote against the Austin ban, it is only the utilitarian part of me that did so; not the idealist libertarian in me.

Last spring, I had a chance to speak to a large audience regarding the smoking ban, and this was my speech outline... you weren't alone in the fight:

Smoking Bans and a Proposed Statewide Moratorium

Student Name: Daniel Shanklin

Organization: Cause-and-effect, Problem-and-solution

Specific Purpose: I would like each audience member to believe smoking bans are damaging and ineffective. I will also ask for their assistance in changing the laws.

INTRODUCTION

I. Attention-Getter: How many of you have smoked a cigarette in the last 30 days? If you’re embarrassed to answer, that’s okay.

II. Relevance: The rest of you, I’d like to see a show of hands from people who have smoked at a bar in the last 30 days, and keep your hands up for just a second. Ladies and gentlemen, aside from me, these are your neighborhood bar’s best friends. Okay, you can put your hands down.

III. Credibility: According to a 2003 survey conducted in Toronto, smokers spend, on average, 68% more than non-smokers when they visit bars, night clubs, and fine dining restaurants (Gillen, 2003). The same survey reports that smokers make 50% more visits than non-smokers every year. Simply put, (1) smokers go to bars more often and (2) smokers generate more revenue per person than non-smokers. But this could all change in Austin within the next two weeks. An initiative has been placed on the May 7th ballot that will ban smoking in all bars, restaurants, essentially any and all businesses. As a frequenter of many Austin bars, I am not too happy about this.

IV. Thesis: Today, I want to first tell you a little about smoking bans in general, and second, I want to tell you why many smoking bans are just plain bad. Lastly, I’m going to tell you what I think should be done that is fair to both smokers and non-smokers.

BODY

I. In Austin, Dallas, and Houston, partial smoking bans are already in place.
A. The current Austin ban is an ordinance similar to those in Houston and Dallas, and in its current writing prohibits smoking in all public places and publicly owned buildings (Austin, 2003).
B. As is written in the Austin smoking ordinance, which was passed in 2003, restaurants and bars are the only exception, and both must pay a $300/month licensing fee to the city if they want to have a smoking section. (Austin, 2003).
C. Furthermore, as the ordinance states, smoking sections have to be completely sealed off from the other sections of the restaurant. (Austin, 2003).
D. Now, because of the building costs posed to restaurants, and the new $300/month licensing fee required from bars, as well, there really aren’t many smoking havens left in Austin.
i. KeepAustinFree.com says that the current ordinance was a major contributing factor to Katz’s Deli’s recent bankruptcy (Silver, 2005).
ii. In fact, on the home page at KeepAustinFree.com, it says that there are over 2000 restaurants in Austin, and only 6 allow smoking (Silver, 2005).
iii. It also says that less than a third of all Austin bars allow smoking… that statistic really surprised me (Silver, 2005).
E. According to the city charters of Dallas and Houston, ordinances have recently passed that prohibit smoking in ALL restaurants… only bars are allowed to have smokers.

Transition: Now that we know a little about the current ban, let’s talk about why the newly proposed Austin smoking ban and other cities’ smoking bans are inherently bad.

II. Why Smoking Bans are Bad
A. For starters, bans are ineffective at actually getting people to quit smoking.
i. Last night, I decided to do a little “field research,” if you will, and I went down to Cain and Abel’s near UT. I ended up with a $17 bar tab and a few games of pool, but I also heard some differing opinions on the ban while I was there.
ii. One guy I spoke with told me that he was going to vote for the ban for one reason only: it would help him quit smoking.
iii. Besides the fact that this guy actually wants a law passed because he has no self-control, the ban might not help him quit smoking after all.
iv. The City of Austin’s “Air Quality Task Force” reported in 2003 that since Austin’s first partial smoking ban was enacted in 1994, there has been no change in the average number of smokers in Travis County, which is about 23% (Gillen, 2003).
v. The Ban DIDN’T effectively stop smoking… not even a little.
B. This brings me to my next point: When Austin bans smoking in bars, they will be chasing off many of the best patrons.
i. If smokers can’t smoke in bars and restaurants, they simply won’t go. Some live music venues can survive by charging cover fees, but most bars are simply places where people go to both drink AND smoke, not just one or the other.
ii. The research done already suggests this exodus has begun.
iii. The Dallas Restaurant Association showed in a 2004 report that sales of alcohol in restaurants and bars fell $11.8 million citywide in 2003, the year in which their smoking ban took effect (Associated, 2005).
iv. In Santa Fe, California, the statewide smoking ban hit one bar especially hard.
v. The owner of the “Rim Ram” tavern was quoted as saying on DaveHitt.com:
“Before the smoking ban, we would take in about $900 on Wednesday nights. The week following the start of the smoking ban, we barely made $300. The next week, we only made $75, and we made even less in the week following” (Hitt, 2004).
vi. Do we really want to put bars and restaurants out of business because of a smoking ban?
C. The biggest reasons I think the ban is bad, though, is it curbs my right to choose.
i. People who frequent bars and smoking sections make a conscious effort to go there… no one is forced to enter a smoking establishment.
ii. Can we not trust people to drink where they want to drink?
iii. Even employees aren’t forced to endure smoke beyond their will. KeepAustinFree.com says that 99% of Austin’s 46,000 businesses are smoke free by choice, not by mandate (Silver, 2005).
iv. Can we not trust their workers to choose where they want to work?

Transition: So far, we’ve talked about current smoking bans and why Austin’s new ban would be a huge mistake. Now I’d like to share with you my solution, both in Austin and in the state of Texas.

III. Solutions
A. First things first: If you live in Austin, you need to vote on this issue.
i. Voting stations are open all over Austin until May 3rd if you want to vote early, but you can also vote on Election Day, the 7th.
ii. I would hope that after what you’ve heard today, you’ll say “NO” to the new smoking ban.
iii. If, however, you are for the ban, it is your civic duty to get out there and cancel my vote.
B. My second solution, which applies to everyone in this room, is a statewide moratorium on certain smoking bans.
i. I think we need to ban any ban that would prevent an 18-and-up venue from allowing smoking. If you’re an adult, the decision to enter a smoking establishment should be left in your hands, not the governments.
iv. We can see that moratoriums do work, so I would encourage each of you to visit KeepAustinFree.com to learn more about how you can contact “the powers that be” and support a statewide moratorium on certain smoking bans.

CONCLUSION

Summary: I hope that each of you has learned more than you already knew about smoking bans, and if I’ve successfully convinced you that they are bad, and that all of us have the ability to secure our personal freedoms, then I’ve done what I came to do. What I want you to remember most of all is that smoking bans are ineffective at making smokers quit, they hurt businesses, and they seriously restrict your right to choose. In case any of you were wondering, here’s an interesting fact about me: I DON’T SMOKE and haven’t for years… just one or two when I drink. I’ll leave you with a quote from my friend James White, owner of the Broken Spoke: “A honky tonk is a place for drinking, dancing, smoking, and having a good time. You take any of those away, and it just ain’t a honky tonk anymore” (Silver, 2005).

aw, dis wil' shit sounds like you need a cig... u must b some rude fuck that has no respect for what people around u want. next time i am taking a leek at a urinal next to u dont b alarmed if i turn and piss in yer face. at least urine is sterile and doesnt cause cancer.why do assholes like u have a problem with stepping outside to smoke? i used to smoke pot and never had a prob with going to someplace where no one would gripe about it. u just think its yer god given right to piss on anyone u want to. welcome to the other side 420... oh please write me back, i am sure it will be so enlightening. i wouldnt be so mad if u just ate the fuckin things.... im sure u will delete this cause u got no nads to keep it up but .......

well that ended up a lil more intense than i wanted. just got done argueing the point with a bud. i think it would be better to say yes it is your right to smoke but if the person next to u doesnt want to be subjected to that smoke why do u have a prob with walking 30 feet to go outside and do what u like? no one is saying u cant smoke and no one is saying that your right to do so is in jeopardy but it is not your right to endanger other peoples health when we all want to enjoy the same concert or sit by the same hot girl at a bar. all this ban is doing is making sure that we as adults can go out and enjoy the same things. if i dont want to drink then i dont have to but if u sitting next to me pour your beer down my throat then that would be different wouldnt it? why is smoking? i hope that all of you against the ban realise that you can still smoke, u just cant make me. for what its worth i went to cedar street on sat. night and right next to the no smoking signs just about everyone was smoking.........

Bubba, the problem is not with voluntarily moving away from someone who's bothered by smoking. The problem is *involuntarily being forced* to move or to move others whether someone around them is bothered by smoking or not. If I smoked and someone in front of my was bothered, I'd probably move a bit away and continue on. What I don't like is the government telling who can smoke where and potentially ruining the lives of those who disobey. I don't think you've read my side of the argument closely enough. Go back through the links at the top of this post and pay closer attention.

In my view we nee to create a support network of family and friends to help them stop smoking.