Was public smoking decreased by market forces or ordinances?

Yeah, smoking is awful, but let the market decide
Melvyn D. Magree
Originally published in
Reader Weekly
May 11, 2000

The recent debate about an ordinance banning smoking in restaurants raises three issues that aren’t discussed enough in any law-making: how widespread will conformance to the ordinance be; how and at what cost will enforcement be; and how might the same result be obtained by other means?

I am in sympathy with Greg Gilbert’s and others desire to have smoke free restaurants.  Second hand smoke does not make for a pleasant dining or drinking experience.  Many no-smoking areas in restaurants are a joke.  How can you have a no-smoking table next to a smoking table or even in the same room?

I’ve been at Hacienda del Sol where one smoker three tables away contaminated the whole room.  I always asked to be seated in the back room at Louis’ on London road because the smoke from half of the front room contaminates the whole room.  During a long wait for a table at Blackwoods I didn’t bother to get drinks from the smoke-filled bar.  And I only stop at Hugo’s in Brimson if I’m sure I’ll be the only one at the bar.

I’ve talked to servers who detest working in the smoking areas.  They say they have to wash their hair when they get home so they can stand themselves.  And I’ve talked to owners who would rather operate as non-smoking but think they will see less business if they do.

With a no-smoking ordinance, many restaurant owners and employees will be very pleased.  It will level the playing field for them.  On the other hand, some restaurant owners who feel strongly that a no-smoking ordinance is an intrusion into the operation of their businesses will wink at patrons who smoke in their establishments.  And smokers who feel strongly about their “right” to smoke will gravitate towards those establishments.

How much effort and money will the city be willing to expend to ensure the ordinance is obeyed uniformly?  Even if the city were willing to make a big effort to expend the effort, could not those resources be better used elsewhere, say on sidewalks and alleys?  Also enforcement would work in some quarters to further increase disrespect and distrust of government.  This in turn further erodes our ability to have a civil society.

It may take a bit longer, but a private anti-smoking campaign may be more successful and far cheaper than a city ordinance.  A good start is the full page ad sponsored by the Twin Ports Youth and Tobacco Coalition on the back cover of the previous issue of the Northland Reader.

Other headlines for ads besides “Secondhand Smoke is Poisoning Our Children” could be “If Restaurants Take Pride in Their Food, Why Do They Let Smokers Contaminate It?” or “The Wine’s Bouquet Was Magnificient But the Air Was Foul Indeed ”.

Anti-smoking organizations could publish lists of smoke-free restaurants or even ratings on how truly “smoke-free” no-smoking sections are.  They could also provide window signs for no-smoking restaurants that are a bit more inviting than “No Smoking” such as “We Value Our Food, Please Don’t Smoke.”

And we can all let management know what we think of their environment.  If you are unhappy with the smoke in a restaurant, tell the manager.  If you are pleased that a restaurant has a no smoking policy, tell the manager.  And be sure to go back as often as you can.

If you don’t think it will work, consider all the fast food restaurants that are now smoke free.  It was customers that got them to change, not ordinances.  Now let’s work on the better restaurants.

If you think about it, market forces can provide solutions to some other problems that currently are going through courts or legislatures.  Market action could provide solutions more quickly and cheaply than litigation and laws.

Postscript: 2017-11-02
Well, it seems we’ve had a combination of market forces and ordinances.  It is really nice to not even worry about smoke, except possibly on a patio.  And it’s great to walk into buildings without passing a phalanx of smokers.

Now if we can only get smokers to pay attention to the no smoking signs at bus stops.  I’ve never had the nerve to ask smokers if I didn’t make them smoke why are they making me smoke!

Freedom to do what?

Many people and corporations complain that their freedoms are being taken away by this law or that law which restricts certain behavior.  Are these smoke screens or do they have a point? Let’s look at a few cases.

Vermont has passed a law that GMO foods should be labelled as such.  Monsanto and the Grocery Manufacturers Association filed suit that this was a violation of their right of free speech.  Is their right of free speech being taken away by requiring a list of ingredients?  If you were on a limited salt diet, wouldn’t you want to compare products for their salt content?  If you had had cancer and should avoid soy lecithin, wouldn’t you want to seek products without soy lecithin?

Admittedly, the First Amendment contains “Congress shall make no law…prohibiting the freedom of speech…”; that phrase has no qualifier like “persons” or “people”.  But the Constitution also includes Congress has the power “to regulate Commerce…among the several States…”

I wouldn’t be surprised if these companies also used the “free market” argument.  But “free market” doesn’t mean sellers get to do what they please; it also means that the buyers have all the information they need to make an informed decision.  Jews and Muslims want to know if products contain pork; shouldn’t those who have an aversion to other ingredients also know if products contain those ingredients?

In other words, if food manufacturers are free to deceive us then don’t they take away our freedom to know what we eat?

The First Amendment also contains “people have the right to peaceably assemble”.  Does that give them the right block other people’s right to move about?  I’m sure that meant that people could meet in some hall and discuss whatever was on their minds.  Maybe it also meant that people could assemble at the entrance of a government building, but only if they left room for others to go in and out of the building.  I doubt that the writers of the Bill of Rights considered peaceably assembling as filling the streets for whatever cause.

The gun manufacturers have been working for decades to erode the Second Amendment from the “right of the people to bear arms” (meaning in militias) to the “right of persons to bear arms”.  As late as 1939, a conservative Supreme Court Justice wrote the majority opinion that an individual did not have the right to carry a rifle in a parade, only those in a state-sanctioned militia.

But what is lost in many of the arguments for the individual right to bear arms is where is the argument for the right to not be shot?

Concerning “freedom of religion”, one has to be careful reading some of the stories concerning people’s or corporation’s “freedom of religion”.  Some of these stories have been blown out of proportion; others show that one person’s “freedom of religion” is impinging on another person’s freedom of religion.

If a Christian-owned company required that female Muslim employees not wear head scarves, then does a Muslim-owned company have a right to have all female employees wear head scarves?

In the context of the times of the writing of the Constitution, I think the “prohibiting the free exercise” of religion was more meant if you want to go to a Baptist Church fine, if you want to go to a Methodist Church fine.  I doubt that they would countenance those who believed in virgin sacrifice having free exercise.

If for security reasons banks ask that customers not wear hoods or sunglasses, then should not they ask that women not have their faces covered?  Many a man has escaped from other men by wearing a burqa.  Are the banks violating some customers “freedom of religion” or are they protecting their right not to be robbed?

The Congress that has been so adamant about Second Amendment rights seems equally adamant about walking all over Fourth Amendment rights.  “The right of be people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects…”  What is the “probable cause” of gathering information on who calls whom?  Isn’t a phone call by extension a “paper”?  Thanks, Ron Paul, for your efforts.

Many individuals claim a right to do what pleases them without any consideration on how those actions impinge on other people’s rights.

If there is a right to smoke, isn’t there also a right to breathe clean air?  Although smoking has declined dramatically, there are still too many people that smoke very close to signs “No smoking within 15 feet”.  If someone were to ask them to move away, it is more likely they will get angry rather than apologize and move away.

If there is a right to listen to music, isn’t there also a right to have quiet?  Many people have their car radios turned up so loud that other drivers can barely hear the music on their own radios.  Many people have their earphones turned up so loud that others can’t hear the music on their own earphones.  If you have the right to blast hip-hop up to twenty feet away, do I also have a right to blast Beethoven’s Ninth up to twenty feet away?

I think the thought attributed to Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. that “Your right to move your fist ends where my nose begins” is apt for almost all of the above cases.  A manufacturer’s “right” to withhold information ends where people’s health begins.  A person’s right to bear arms ends where other people’s safety begins.  A person’s right to freedom of religion ends where it restricts other people’s freedom of religion.  A person’s freedom of assembly ends where it impedes other people’s freedom of movement.

What is lost in all the talk about freedoms is that the basic freedom is the freedom to govern ourselves and not be governed by some foreign power.  And to govern ourselves we elect people to make rules to make society work.  You do vote in every election, don’t you?

Who is doing what social engineering?

Every too often somebody writes a letter to the editor complaining that public transit is “social engineering” and “taking our cars away”.  Have they considered that building all the freeways is social engineering?

How many people lost their houses to make way for the freeways?  How many neighborhoods were separated by freeways?  How many farmers had their land taken by imminent domain?  I know, I know!  It’s eminent domain but when your land is taken it is also imminent.  Aren’t these changes to city and country social engineering?

When the freeways are first built, it becomes much quicker for many people to drive than to take public transit.  More people drive instead of taking the bus, the bus service becomes less frequent for those who don’t drive.  So to save time, more people have to buy cars.  Isn’t this social engineering?

Remember “Field of Dreams” where Robert Redford was told, “Build it and they will come.”  Well, we build freeways and they come.  Soon a four-lane freeway has to become a six-lane freeway.  Soon the six-lane is clogged and has to become an eight-lane freeway.  Where are all the people going to live as the freeways get wider and wider?  Isn’t this social engineering?

For some reason those who complain about their cars “being taken away” don’t seem to realize that the more other people take public transit the more room there is for them on the freeways.

And actually, public transit should have dedicated lines or lanes right down the middle of every freeway.  I remember driving out of Chicago on I-90 on a Sunday afternoon.  It was stop and go in three lanes in my direction.  We would move a bit and a train would catch up to us.  Then we would move forward ahead of the train.  This went on for fifteen minutes or so and the pattern was reversed.  The train would pull ahead and we would catch up.  Eventually the train was long gone and we started and stopped, started and stopped.

When I grew up in Cleveland, we walked to neighborhood stores or took the streetcar downtown.  Now most neighborhood stores and downtown stores have been closed in favor of sprawling malls in the middle of nowhere.  Sometimes the lots are so big that it takes twice as long to walk from one’s car as it did to walk to the corner store.  Isn’t this social engineering?  And it was done without a public vote!

The irony is that most social engineering is done by corporations, not governments.  When a government does “social engineering” we might have an open debate about it.  When a corporation does “social engineering”, it is done behind closed doors and often by deceit.

In the Twentieth Century we as a nation were socially engineered by a man many of us never heard of – Edward Bernays.  A nephew of Sigmund Freud, he applied many of his uncle’s ideas to manipulation of public opinion.  Supposedly he believed that “public’s democratic judgment was ‘not to be relied upon’…’so they had to be guided from above.”

He worked in the Committee on Public Information during World War I.  One task was publicizing the idea that the U.S. involvement was “bringing democracy to all of Europe.”  We had a repeat of this use of “democracy” in our own times.  “The ill that men do lives after them…”  The success of “bringing democracy” surprised Bernays, and he wondered if similar propaganda could be used in peacetime.  Rather than call it propaganda, he labelled it “public relations”.

One of his first achievements was helping the tobacco industry break the taboo of women smoking in public.  He staged a big event in New York City in which models lit up Lucky Strike cigarettes or “Torches of Freedom”.  This promotion was not done as advertising but as news!  Smoking was giving women “freedom” and “liberty”.  Two more echoes in our time: “freedom” and “liberty” are smoke screens for doing what one damn well pleases without concern for the consequences for others.

Many Americans ate a light breakfast of coffee and maybe a roll or orange juice.  He arranged for letters being sent to 5,000 doctors asking if they thought Americans should have a bigger breakfast.  About ninety percent answered saying Americans should have bigger breakfasts.  This he had published as news in papers across the country.  In parallel, he had other articles published that bacon and eggs should be part of a larger breakfast.

He believed that we would have a utopia if the inner energies of individuals “could be harnessed and channeled by a corporate elite for economic benefit.”  This idea seems to be alive and well with all the corporate claims that they will create jobs and that environmental protection and safety rules will only take away jobs.

He wrote a paper called “Engineering of Consent”:  "Any person or organization depends ultimately on public approval, and is therefore faced with the problem of engineering the public's consent to a program or goal.”  Isn’t this a description of “social engineering”?

In many ways, Bernays was value-neutral.  He protected a play in 1913 that supported sex education.  He promoted fluoridation of water to help the aluminum industry sell a by-product of aluminum production.  He hosted the first NAACP convention in Atlanta, and there was no violence.  On the other hand, he inflated the threat of communism and was instrumental in the overthrow of the elected president of Guatemala.

For lots more on Bernays see Wikipedia and “Century of Self”, a four-part BBC series.  I hope these will help you be more skeptical of what anybody says for or against any idea.  Or as in “All the President’s Men”, “Follow the Money”.  Oh, and be skeptical of the attribution of this quote.  If you do so, you might inoculate yourself against “social engineering”.

Mel considers himself a gullible skeptic.

This was also published in the Reader Weekly of Duluth, 2015-05-21 at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/05/21/5311_who_is_doing_what_social_engineering

My great influence as a writer

Every so often, somebody tells me they enjoy my columns in the Reader Weekly of Duluth but few write a letter to the editor about my columns.

I have people all over the word read my blog entries, but I suspect many of them are only occasional readers or even reverse spammers.

Well, I just had the wet pail of reality dumped on my head.

Only three people have read “Be Counted!  We the People Are Counting on You”.  Even posting a link to it in a comment to a turnout article in the New York Times didn’t help.  In fact, only one person recommended my comment.

On the other hand, seven people have read “Consideration for Garlic Lovers”.

Oh, well!  I guess three readers is better than the none I would have had if I had left the ideas in my head.

I was right to be positive about a negative

This morning my urologist called me.  He was pleased to tell me that there was no sign of cancer in the biopsies of my prostate.  See "The Impatient Outpatient".  However, he wants to see me again next February and his staff called me back with a specific date.

Where are my get-young pills?

Ah, this is a good place to stick in my notes about Ponce de León and the Fountain of Youth.  Ponce did not discover Florida.  "By 1513, when Ponce de Léon first arrived, so many Europeans had visited Florida that some Indians greeted him in Spanish."  The fountain of youth at St. Augustine was concocted by Washington Irving over 300 years later.  See "Ponce de León, Exposed", T. Allman, New York Times, 2013-04-01.

About the only Fountains of Youth are to pick long-lived grandparents, don't smoke, drink moderately, eat your vegetables, and exercise regularly.  I've failed at some time or another on all five, but I have followed the second for over 30 years and I try to follow the last three every day.  Plus I have Magree's push-up rule of longevity - you'll live as many years more as you can do pushups.  I have been doing between 22 and 26 most mornings.  See "The Magree Inexpensive Heart Stress Test".

Nuclear plants and childhood leukemia, a tenuous link

A new French study has shown that incidents of childhood leukemia are twice as high within 5 km of nuclear plants. See "Child leukemia doubles near French nuclear plants", Reuters, 2012-01-12. Hoo boy! Maybe we can get the damn things shut down!

But, wait a minute! We're still talking about some very small number of cases. Fourteen! 14! Similar studies have found no significant radiation increases near nuclear plants. Could there be another explanation?

"German study finds nuclear energy causes leukemia… or maybe not…" suggests that nuclear plants are in industrial areas, some of which have had severe pollution from other sources, like munition plants. Second, poorer people tend to live near these areas and for a variety of reasons tend to have more health issues, for example, more parents who smoke.

I checked Google for "smoking leukemia" and was given over six million items. Here's one from an "unimpeachable" source - "Kids' Leukemia Risk Tied to Dad's Smoking", Fox News, 2011-12-15 (actually from Reuters). The risk is given as 15 percent higher if the father smokes. The sample size was 400 for children with leukemia and 800 for children without.

I think these cases show that people shouldn't leap to alarmist positions nor should they be quick to dismiss indications of a problem. Unfortunately, our political climate leads to uncritical acceptance of one position or the other.

Smoking is not a private act

I went to the car wash today with a nice-smelling car; I left with a stinky car!

The prep guy is a heavy smoker and in this very cold weather he keeps the overhead doors closed. Just opening my window to give him the sales slip let so much smoke residue into my car from the air and from his clothes that by the time I got home the car still smelled of stale smoke.

See also "Smokers are a dying breed".

The rights of one over the rights of the many

We are in Missouri which does not have a state-wide smoking ban. We chanced going to an Applebee's across the street from our hotel. We asked for non-smoking, but didn't see an ash tray in the place, not even at the bar.

We discussed this with our server. She said that Applebee's in general has a non-smoking policy but certain franchisees allow it, including her employer. However, she said, Monday smokers will be limited to a certain area.

My wife was enjoying a dessert when she smelled a cigarette. Shortly afterward I smelled it too. I quickly paid our bill, gulped my after-dinner drink, and we left. On our way out, we mentioned it to some staff and they were very sympathetic. They have to live with that day in and day out.