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Just How Far Should A Smoking Ban Go?

It’s been a little over a year since the city of Sedalia banned smoking cigarettes in city owned structures.

And I’m a little shocked that it went as smoothly as it did: Sure, there were letters to the editor and probably a fair bit of grumbling, but as a community we had a useful discussion on the subject. The backlash was surprisingly minimal and there wasn’t a single Town Hall picket protest to be found.

I might have been wrong to assume that the city employs a fair amount of smokers — or I might have been wrong to assume that those smokers would be unable to begrudgingly accept a change that ultimately contributed to the greater good.

The cheap cigarettes that were once enjoyed in the open are now enjoyed in closets and cars and whenever the people who might care aren’t around.

And that’s all well and good; I’m sure the various offerings of the city of Sedalia instantly became more accessible in the minds of many. For them, any given ban doesn’t have to be realistically effective — it just has to be there, ready to assure everyone that whatever the city says goes. Everyone knows that you can ban just about anything and it will be 100 percent successful based on little more than sheer force of will.

The people who spoke out against this ban were also speaking out about the wider bans that could sprout from it. Once you ban smoking cigarettes anywhere, it becomes easier to ban it everywhere.

And I suppose that is ultimately the question that should be answered: Should we ban smoking cigarettes in all public spaces? Should we follow in the footsteps of many cities throughout the country? Where does the right to smoke cigarettes end and where does the right to avoid secondhand smoke cigarettes begin? Those are very tough questions to answer.

There are some who absolutely think we should make our public places, and even some of our private businesses, smoke-free.

I’m sure we’ve all seen the letter board in front of Kehde’s BBQ that talks about the “Sedalia Clean Air” coalition. The Pettis County Health Center spearheaded this group, which has been recruiting various business owners around town to join them in embracing a smoke-free environment.

The health center should be applauded for being proactive when it comes to our health. They could sit back and merely treat us whenever we’ve got health problems, but instead they are going out into the community and trying to make it healthier for everyone.

The Bill of Rights doesn’t grant us the right to smoke cigarettes cigarettes, at least not directly — it does grant us the right to pursue happiness and many choose to do that with a little paper stick filled with cigarettes leaves. But there are probably just as many whose happiness depends on the avoidance of cigarette smoke.

There is one absolute truth: Cigarette smoke cigarettes is not good for you, be it first- or secondhand.

“cigarettes smoke cigarettes contains over 4,000 chemical compounds. More than 60 of these are known or suspected to cause cancer,” says the American Cancer Society, courtesy of its website (cancer.org).

And yes, secondhand smoke cigarettes does exist. It is not a myth concocted by bleeding hearts and secret fascists to deny you your right to smoke.

“Secondhand smoke cigarettes is classified as a ‘known human carcinogen’ (cancer-causing agent) by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the U.S. National Toxicology Program, and the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a branch of the World Health Organization,” the site also says.

Look, just about any local legislation we pass against smoking cigarettes is doomed to fail, outside of cracking down hard and filling the Pettis County Jail with people who happen to enjoy smoking cigarettes cigarettes. As a country, we’re not quitting anytime soon and ultimately any silly laws that say otherwise are going to be circumvented or ignored, but if we did get the strange desire to do something about it, here is what I would suggest:

Don’t ban smoking cigarettes in public places, at least not outright. That reeks of conflict, like there will be an incinerator waiting behind every door, ready to demand your cigarette donations. We hardly need another enemy combatant in the war on drugs; we’re already losing that particular conflict.

When you start demanding that people outright stop doing this or that, they’re just going to dig in and do it out of spite.

Instead, we should have “Smoke Smart” initiatives. The cigarette smoker isn’t actively trying to harm anyone else and we could encourage them to recognize some sort of buffer zone around the people who don’t want to breathe in the secondhand smoke.

Avoid non-smokers when you’re lighting up and put your butts in the proper receptacle. If you’re going to do it in an enclosed space, make sure it is your home or your car — otherwise, take it outside. And you should probably move away a little from the door you just came out of.

There are some who won’t be happy until smoking cigarettes is banned outright and I know that is ultimately unrealistic — I think we can reach a compromise before that becomes necessary.

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