“Pull Over Sir, I Must Fine You for Smoking in Your Car”
By Jonathan Bean • Friday November 18, 2011 4:51 PM PDT • 10 Comments
Sean Gabb (Libertarian Alliance of UK) recently sent me a press release protesting the British Medical Association’s call for a ban on smoking in cars.
With the usual caveat that smoking is dangerous, kills, causes impotence, flatulence, and everything in between. . .
There are people opposed to cigarette smoking (myself included) and then there are anti-smoking zealots. They are the types who propose some new restriction on individual freedom because it is “being abused.” All the while, they cry “stop calling us prohibitionists! We are not going to ban smoking in bars or pool halls. That is an utter lie.”
Short time passes . . .
“Wait!,” they shout, “we must ban smoking in pool halls and all other inside places. Think of the people ‘trapped’ in those enclosed spaces. Smokers are violating the freedom of nonsmokers at Smoky Joe’s” (never mind that no one forced you to go to Smoky Joe’s Pool Hall).
Yet, trying to appear reasonable, they *insist* that they are NOT banning it outside. You are perfectly free to smoke in open air.
Short time passes . . .
“Ban smoking near doors! Passive smoke kills! Push those smokers 15, 25, 100 feet from the doorways!!” But, let us be absolutely clear: we have no intention of banning smoking in private places.”
Short time passes . . .
Now it is private cars.
But they are not prohibitionists.
Recommended Reading:
Jacob Sullum, For Your Own Good: The Anti-Smoking Crusade and the Tyranny of Public Health (1998)
Tags: Civil Liberties, Culture, Law, Liberty, Nanny State, Personal Liberty, Privacy, Regulation, Surveillance 
I find this article rather interesting. According to WalesOnline.co.uk, they say that smoking in cars leads to the death of 23 premature children every year. However it is not the cigarettes that are the problem, it is the parents that think it is okay to smoke when they have a child.
Antonio | Nov 21, 2011 | Reply
Smoking in cars isn’t private. The smoke and other poisonous gases and particulates flow out the exhausts of the cabins of the cars and are drawn in through the ventilation intakes of following vehicles. Smoking is a distraction both to drivers and those riding with them. Lighting-up while driving is hazardous, especially if the fag or lighter is dropped. Though a relatively small portion of all crashes, injuries and deaths are smoking-related, to those whose property is smashed, those who are injured, and those whose friends and loved ones are killed due to drivers’ smoking, I think it significant.
What with all the money spent on reducing the noxious emissions of motor vehicles, injuries and deaths, it would be a consideration for smokers to lay off juggling their burning weeds until they are where they can keep their stuff to themselves and not be so generous as to share with others.
Al | Nov 21, 2011 | Reply
Al:
Geez, why not just lock everybody into their houses, not allow them to drive at all, then we’ll all be REALLY safe!!
Capn Mike | Nov 21, 2011 | Reply
Al, I think you must be a public health epidemiologist, just out there saving lives, right? Yet another of the technocrat rulers permeating an out-of-control bureaucracy, dropping in here as a part of your mission to find evermore ways to protect all of us lowly ignorant imbeciles from ourselves. If only you or Bill Maher could be king!
The evidence for second-hand smoke’s pervasive deadliness is even spottier and less convincing than Al Gore’s AGW. Guess what? When I was growing up, public places were not even sectioned off into smoking and non-smoking areas. I’m way past young, okay? We’re talking almost two generations ago now. During that 2 generation span, the assault on smokers thru every restriction one can think of, like the things listed in the article above, plus vast amounts of money poured into smoker cessation programs and psa’s, not to mention the insane tax increases on tobacco products, all funded, of course, thru the direct payout by tobacco companies TO STATES as a result of those huge lawsuits, has been wholesale and comprehensive. Well, guess what? In the only area worth measuring, deaths from lung cancer, emphysema, and other lung-related conditions, all this comprehensive totalitarian government meddling has garnered next to nothing! There have been only neglibible, if any, decreases in those death rates across time (I don’t have time to research this for you, but its out there if you want to find it). I say if any, because of course those statistics, as well as studies by the medical industrial complex, have been manipulated in favor of the tobacco nazi movement.
Disclaimer: I do not smoke – quit many years ago. I quit because I decided it wasn’t good for me. Novel, huh? Neither before nor since have I ever asked anyone not to light up in my presence or the presence of my children. And it was a rare occurrence, back when I was a smoker, for someone to ask me not to light up. But guess what, Al. When someone asked me not to, I politely obliged. That’s called market-based regulation and it works way better than bullshit laws against smoking in your own car! To quote Stossell, “Gimme a break!”
Tim | Nov 22, 2011 | Reply
If it is intended to outlaw smoking, why not outlaw ALL the manufacture of cigarettes and send them all to jail.
Marlowe Camello | Nov 22, 2011 | Reply
Ban Smoking
Ban Drinking
Ban Sex
Ban Wild Parties
Ban Eating
Ban TV
Ban Rap Music
Ban Pets
Ban People
Kill Everyone!!!
Bobby Cruz | Nov 22, 2011 | Reply
Ban Moderation!!!
Bobby Cruz | Nov 22, 2011 | Reply
Antonio–I read a startling statistic the other day. It claims that every 5 hours in America a child is murdered by a parent. Maybe we ban children?
Nicholas Rion | Nov 27, 2011 | Reply
Antonio–on second thought–Let’s ban parents!
Nicholas Rion | Nov 27, 2011 | Reply
Oh, let’s just ban people!
Nicholas Rion | Nov 27, 2011 | Reply