Honorable Lawmakers

According to attorney John Banzhaf, director of  Action on Smoking and Health, smokers have no rights. He says there is no legal or Constitutional right to smoke, even in one's own home, and his organization is willing, for a fee, to show how to deprive smokers of all they hold dear: their children, their jobs, their homes.

 The same Mr. Banzhaf said to a restaurateur who permits smoking in his establishment: "Nice restaurant you have here; hate to see anything bad happen to it." Maybe Mr. Banzhaf has watched too many episodes of The Sopranos, or maybe that is the arrogance of the rabid anti-smoker being spoken aloud.

Our society is based on the concept that Americans are free and responsible adults, allowed to make their own decisions. They may make what somebody else considers the wrong decision, but freedom is ultimately the right to make the wrong decision.

Similarly, our freedom and prosperity are inextricably based on our right of private property. Business owners who risk their money, energy, and future on their private business have a right to run that business as they see fit. Nobody forces customers into a smoky bar. If customers have been clamoring for smoke-free bars and restaurants, the market would have provided them. If it didn't, you should question where that clamor came from.

There's an old term for well-organized, fabulously well-paid, strident, single-issue special-interest groups from elsewhere--carpetbaggers. Carpetbaggers are no less real--and very dangerous--than they were then. Ultimately, allowing these outsiders to determine public policy in a city where they won't feel the heat should that policy fail is far more dangerous than the slight risk from environmental smoke.

To quote Anthony Pires, Rhode Island House Finance chairman, "Smokers are a minority, but that doesn't make it right for the government to tax them unfairly. Cigarettes are a legal substance and people have the right to smoke, even if it kills them.  It's like saying we want to clean up the environment, we want cleaner air, so therefore let's take the gasoline tax from 28 cents to $1.28 so people won't buy gas guzzlers and they won't drive as much. That's not the way you govern and that's not the way you lead on issues. You don't punish people, you try to educate people."

Thank you.