Video: Smoking Ban is a Ban on Freedom

Politicians make the gullible public believe that policies of prohibition, usually targeted at vices (like smoking alcohol, prostitution or drugs), have been designed for our betterment (health, environment and yada yada yada--as if we are all too obtuse to know what's best for ourselves).

In reality, these actions signify as their latent desire to expand political control over society by reducing our freedom.

The video below from LearnLiberty.org explains how smoking ban regulations assails people's property rights.


Here is a passage from LearnLiberty.org

According to Prof. Aeon Skoble, smoking bans are on the rise in America. At first glance, this trend seems to stage a battle of rights. The smoker claims to have the right to smoke, while the nonsmoker claims the right to clean air in "public" places such as restaurants and bars.

In an important way, however, restaurants and bars are private places. They have owners, just like homes. Skoble argues that restaurant and bar owners should be able to set smoking rules for their establishments, much like you can set smoking rules in your own household.

Nobody forces a customer into a particular restaurant or bar; drinkers and diners are free to choose among the alternatives available, each of which has a unique environment, including its set of smoking rules. Discussions about "smoker's rights vs. nonsmoker's rights" miss the fundamental issue: restaurant and bar owners' property rights.

Based on Odds, Smokers Die Earlier

Bad news for smokers (I guess this is NOT NEW news at all). A study says probability of death is higher for smokers as shown in the chart below from New York Times…

From the New York Times ``New risk charts in a paper published in The Journal of the National Cancer Institute provide a broader perspective than most of the risk calculators on the Internet, because they cover the risks for 10 different causes of death, and for all causes combined, while differentiating by age and between smokers, nonsmokers and former smokers.”

``At first glance, it may appear that smokers and nonsmokers die of heart disease at the same rate, but a 35-year-old male smoker is seven times as likely to die of heart disease as a nonsmoker the same age. The numbers begin to converge as some smokers survive the more common smokers’ diseases, and by age 75, their rate of death from heart disease is almost the same as nonsmokers’.”

So if a smoker does hurdle the said risks diseases by age 75, death rate is almost the same as nonsmokers. So if you can’t help get rid of the habit maybe eating watercress can get you through to the age were smokers and non smokers have level chances of dying.