Liberty Alone

At Comment is Free

I fail to see it as an advance of liberal civilisation when a man on his way home from office or factory cannot enjoy a cigarette with his beer in a private club that has agreed to his doing so.
…
The smoking ban is a classic instance of what central government enjoys most, meddling in personal behaviour (ID cards, NHS records, Asbos, smoking bans) while ignoring forms of social control which it understands least, family and local self-discipline. There is a yawning gap between Labour’s all-pervading state interventionism, which it laughably calls “liberal”, and the tradition of English liberalism…

He also makes good points about the way smoking was being driven out of many places by consumer demand. Personally I think it was this process of offering choice which caused such a reaction amongst the health authoritarians who seek to ‘look after us’ since it would still give smokers places to smoke which is unacceptable to those who would control us.

(hat tip Tim Worstall)

It seems people look at my attack against the smoking ban and assume I’m somehow asserting a right for smokers to smoke wherever they like.

That is not the case. I do defend the right to do to your body what you like, that includes smoking, taking drugs, engaging in consensual sexual acts which society frowns upon or anything else. I do not defend some right to inflict it upon another person without their consent.

Smoking does affect others. The extent to which it does is not clear, but lets take the worst case scenario that passive smoking is as bad for you as smoking is. I will work within this for my argument.

When smoking was allowed in a pub, if you went to a pub which allowed smoking you did so in full knowledge of the fact that people would be smoking there, you therefore accepted that. If you did not wish someone to smoke in your presence then you should not have gone into the pub.

The smoker in that case was not forcing his smoke upon you. You had the option to not go to the pub. Since nobody has a positive right to go to a pub, they are private property the landlord says who can and cannot enter, your rights were not infringed.

Similarly, if a smoker went into a non-smoking pub they would accept that upon entering and would not be allowed to smoke in there. If they wished to smoke then they’d have to leave.

What the government has done with this legislation is to impose its view that smoking is bad and people must be prevented from doing it. Thankfully we are not at the point at which prohibition is feasible so the next best thing was done - ban smoking on private property to which others are admitted freely.
This is an illegitimate use of force to outlaw voluntary contracts between landlords and their customers or employers and employees.

One of the arguments that is used is that we don’t accept people doing something else unpleasant, be it urinating in a swimming pool or spitting, so we shouldn’t allow smoking.
This analogy is flawed. If there were a swimming pool where people were allowed to urinate then they could. Why not? I wouldn’t go there, but perhaps there are people who’d like to. Or a place where spitting is allowed. Again, why not? We just don’t have such places because there is no demand for them.

So, there is no right to smoke wherever you are. There is no right to enter a private property and insist that the conditions suit you. The government has no place dictating the conditions on which you voluntarily enter private property.

The smoking ban therefore illegitimate. Nobody enters a place where smoking is allowed without giving their consent unless they are being detained by force, in which case you have illegal imprisonment or kidnapping.

Personally, if I ran a pub, I’d at least have a separate smoking room or make it non smoking. That would be my decision. If it lost me lots of custom then I may be forced to allow smoking, but that would be the great democratic mechanism of the market in force, not the elected dictatorship of government.

A prediction of an effect of the smoking ban- bar staff and others who worked in smoky environments will be paid less (unless of course they’re already at the artificial minimum wage).

Of course, nobody asked them if they’d prefer to earn less in a nicer environment or more in a less pleasant one, they’ve just been told that they must earn less because its bad for them otherwise and the government must act to protect them.

The principle behind the smoking ban is profoundly illiberal. It is predicated on a vision of government as having a duty to protect people against themselves and their own actions or that people are incapable of exercising choice in what they do with their time.

If the government wishes to ban smoking from all government property then fine. They can do that. As the property owner that is their prerogative, but to tell others that they cannot allow smoking on their own property is a violation of their rights.

I am not talking about any right to smoke. You have no positive right to smoke where you wish, that is up to the owner of the place you are in. You do have the right, should you wish, to pollute your body with whatever you want.

The argument that you must protect people from passive smoking is false. People are free to choose whether they go to a smoky environment, or if they work in a smoky environment. Are we going to prevent people from throwing food which smells in the bin because it may offend bin men? Or ban miners from working because of the health hazards? Am I to stop posting to this blog because I may get RSI? Everything we do poses risks, we choose to accept them however. In the workplace we expect more money for a risky job. In other things our pleasure outweighs the risk.

We have had many instances of smoking being banned on property by private and public entities without government legislation. My office has always been non-smoking. No need for government legislation to make us do that.

These arguments, and others have been hashed out many times all over the media. My main point is that attitudes to this smoking ban reveal whether a person can be called a liberal.

A liberal may appreciate the results of the ban (I count myself in that) but cannot support the ban on principled grounds.
Those who support the ban are more like the US ‘liberal’ in that they view the state’s role as protecting you from yourself and managing your life. That is not liberalism, it is authoritarianism. Either that or they are simply selfish and view the state as a means to benefit themselves at the expense of others.

I simply cannot call anyone who urges state intervention in a private matter a liberal. It goes against the very grain of liberalism. There is not even any justification for it as pursuing positive freedoms or as protecting people from the aggression of others (if I willingly go into a boxing ring I cannot complain that I’ve been hit)

With the smoking ban coming into effect soon, Tim Harford destructs the so-called economic arguments for the ban.

The irony that the ban is in ‘public spaces’ yet forces people out from private spaces where the public are allowed to enter into actual public spaces is startling.

I’m sure debate will rage about this briefly (and then we’ll get on with our lives, grumbling as we go). For my personal convenience this is great. I hate cigarette smoke, it will be nice to go to a restaurant or pub without having to breath in the smoke, but from a liberal perspective it is wrong. It is forcing the government’s will into private property.
I don’t agree with the argument about protecting workers, they receive higher pay in return for putting up with the smoke and applying the same reasoning to other jobs will eradicate them. If there were real desire for non-smoking pubs then there’d be a lot more. I know of few which have the old saloon and public bars with no smoking in the saloon bar and people do seek them out, but the demand doesn’t seem to be there, or is fulfilled by non-pub alternatives like coffee shops and cafes.

The recent government proposals to raise the smoking age to 18 expose the lack of principle and the illiberal outlook of this government and raises difficult questions around responsibility and the nature of adulthood.

Sean Gabb of the Libertarian Alliance highlights the nature of this government in the press release made on this issue. Rather bluntly he says:

We note with some amusement that in Tony Blair’s New Britain, a man may sodomise a schoolboy in a public lavatory, and the police must look the other way; but if he gives the boy a cigarette afterwards, he will soon be committing a criminal act.

The press release goes on to say the former (with consent naturally) is a good thing, however the way it came about, and the reasons for the proposed raising of the smoking age are for the same reasons, not some ideological reason, but the government prostituting itself to special interest groups in the hopes of gaining votes, and probably money (although I doubt they’d be so stupid to make any deal on these grounds).

Quite rightly, the gay lobby argued for equalisation of the ages of consent. The fact that this is a liberal position to take however meant nothing to the government, they simply want the good press.

Similarly, although wrongly, various lobby groups, including medical professionals (who increasingly take the view that they are the guardians of our health and lifestyles) argue for increasing the smoking age. True, they mean well, but it is not the government’s job to tell us what to do with our own bodies. When they do this, we start to become possessions of the state and not free individuals.

There is no liberal argument for raising the age limit for purchasing cigarettes. Some will try to argue that its for people’s own good, but the government should not be saying what we may or may not do for our own health. Others will try to argue that it costs the NHS money. Well, cigarettes are taxed heavily, isn’t that money meant to be for the NHS to offset the costs to it of smoking (this leaves aside the fact that the NHS is illiberal).

Even if you did argue for it on health grounds and advocated government intervention in our personal lives, this is an inconsistent argument. Sex can be very dangerous to your health, yet we trust 16 year olds to be able to decide whether to have sex and how to do it if they do. We allow 16 year olds to join the army, a job which almost certainly risks your health and even your life.

This leads onto the question of responsibility and adulthood. Colin Ross makes good points on his blog about this. We have no clear definition of what we can or cannot do. Responsibilities which come with adulthood are spread around, arbitrarily, over many ages. Colin summarises these, revealing many I didn’t know existed.

Surely, if someone is responsible enough to know that having sex with someone under the age of consent is illegal they are responsible enough to have sex? If they’re responsible enough to smoke, why not drink? Why not drive? Or vote? If I’m considered responsible enough to decide to fight and possibly die for my country, why can’t I vote?
This area is ripe for discussion, I don’t know what the answer is, except surely we should have an age at which a person is considered an adult and has the responsibility which comes with it. The only reason to have such variegated age limits is to deny responsibility to young people which just feeds into a culture of irresponsibility, fueled by numerous other governmental initiatives to remove personal responsibility and create state dependence.