Non-Smoking Zealotry

Traditional non-smoking advocates who have worked long and hard to have society recognize the scientific findings that tobacco is dangerous to human health have achieved quite the reversal in social habits, both public and private. Medical science has known for quite a long time the horribly deleterious effects of smoking, but it was a tough battle to convince people that smoking represented a severe health problem.

Even though it was a proven fact that tobacco is a carcinogen, and that lung cancer, cancers of the throat, the larynx, the lips were mostly attributable to a lifetime of smoking, people resisted, unwilling to surrender a habit that had become an important part of their lifestyle. Young people continued to be attracted to smoking, responding to marketing that identified it as sophisticated. They saw film celebrities elegantly smoking in avidly watched movies.

These are people, remember, who see warning letters on packs of cigarettes and blithely bypass them. Colour drawings and photographs of internal organs that have been dreadfully impacted by nicotine draw exclamations of alarm and disgust, but don't seem to faze those who have allowed their lives to be ordered by the next cigarette in their pack-a-day habit.

People had become so addicted to smoking they could neither conceive of giving it up, or physically forcing themselves to stop. Eventually the message sank in, and society had no option but to recognize tobacco for the threat it posed to societal health. And then the campaigns began to outlaw people smoking in workplaces, restaurants, shopping venues, hospitals, supermarkets, and eventually even in one's family vehicle ferrying children about.

Because it was not only smoking itself but the effects of second-hand smoke on passive by-standers being affected by the cancerous effects of smoke that was understood. And now, a movement is afoot, and gaining ground, to outlaw smoking in municipal parks, playgrounds, swimming pools, sports fields, stadiums, bus stops, beaches, zoos, municipal cemeteries, building entrances and restaurant patios.

In other words, outlawing smoking in interiors is now widely accepted, and now outdoor areas too are being targeted. Where once smokers could light up anywhere and everywhere - and they did, with no thought whatever to the discomfort of those around them - they are effectively constrained by law from lighting up almost everywhere.

There are those who lament the loss of such elementary freedoms. Those who suffered for many years of their lives, unable to escape the stink and intrusiveness of second-hand smoke, are not among them. People should be free to do as they wish, as long as they don't harm the well-being of others. And one might think that smoking in the open air dissipates the effects of smoke.

It does, to a certain degree, but that is also dependent on the proximity of the smoker to others who do not smoke. And smokers are rarely known for their social courtesies, not taking wholly kindly to their lawful use of tobacco being tossed into the civil garbage can of unlawful activities. It isn't likely that tobacco itself will be prohibited, since prohibition rarely works well.

And governments would sorely miss their income from tobacco taxes, and the job losses that would accompany the shut-down of tobacco manufacturers. One does suppose that we've become too zealous about restricting this self-destructive habit in public, that we are, in effect, encroaching on people's rights to be free to do as they wish.

We shouldn't be fanatical about this issue; on the other hand it's an issue that impacts society hugely. A dilemma, to be sure, since there should be some place where the restrictions don't apply. We simply have to agree that if people want to harm themselves they should be free to do so, as long as we are not harmed by their activities.

And that, in effect, is what these prohibitions ensure.