Honestly - Here in North Carolina, I can be arrested, jailed, and fined, for using foul language, having an open container of alcohol on the street, or not wearing enough clothes. As far as I know, none of those things required a scientific justification.

If smoking bother enough people, outlaw it. Everywhere. We do that for pretty much any other behavior. Discussions like this give smoking a privileged status that it does not deserve.

I think that quite possibly this is the best argument against smoking in public yet.

To counterbalance, restaurants that want to should obtain smoking licenses (akin to liquor licenses) and label themselves as smoke friendly, allowing us to choose to go or not.

Then if you want to smoke, smoke on your land or in smoke bars.

I agree with your premise. The question is not why should we ban this behavior, but why shouldn't we. Saletan has the question backwards. He think we need to justify banning a behavior that bothers the majority. In a democracy, things that bother the majority and aren't given some unique legal protection (such as Constitutionally protection in our country) are likely to be stopped. Smokers first resort to some mythical and completely non-existent right. Then they explain how consider they are as smokers.

If smokers, as a class, were really so considerate, these bans wouldn't have happened in the first place. Smokers would have retreated so as to not bother the rest of us. Additionally, the world wouldn't have discarded cigarette butts littered everywhere. Unfortunately, as a class, smokers seem utterly unaware how troublesome their smoking is to the rest of us and smoke on in ignorant, but annoying, bliss.

If smoking enjoyed some Constitutional protection, then we'd have to craft the law narrowly to avoid stepping on smoking rights. Smoking doesn't enjoy such a protection, so the easiest thing for us majority of nonsmokers to do is to simply ban smoking from the park. While we could make a more narrow ban -- ban smoking only within ten of someone else, for example -- a universal ban is easily and simpler to administer. Unless a smoker can provide some reason for the rest of us to put up with it, the ban doesn't need any more justification than the majority want it.

For those smokers who think the antismoking crowd is a cranky minority, the ban can be challenged and put to popular vote. Does anyone really think a Central Park smoking ban wouldn't pass with a large majority? Laws to ban smoking have enjoyed solid electoral success for more than a decade now (with some losses, of course).

Have you ever heard the term "tyranny of the majority"?

Though fewer and fewer people smoke, we're still talking about around 1/5 of the population, disproportionately lower income at that... I can see set smoking areas, but banning it in public parks is a bit much. Of course, we are talking about the extremely uptight US here, where drinking in parks is also usually illegal, so I guess we can't expect even that much. Moralists with their underpants in a bunch usually get their way.

Maybe if we make it unpleasant enough less morons will start smoking.

Note, I'm not saying anyone who smokes is a moron. I'm saying that with the price/stigma/medical knowledge anyone who starts smoking in this day and age is a moron.

For whatever it's worth: I grew up in North Carolina - tobacco road, y'all. Smokers were the majority, al least among the men. I have allergies, and I suffered under their tyranny quite enough.

Laws should be justified because they should be just. That's why they call it the justice system.

Its simply a matter of semantics.

The point here is that you either have a right to smoke, and we need to jusify taking it from you OR you have no right to smoke and you need to justify being allowed to.

The point of this thread is that the latter, not the former is true.

Ridry, in general the assumption in a free country is that you reserve all rights unless they are specifically restricted. That's the concept behind freedom. You need to justify restricting things in free society, as opposed to a tyranny where you need to justify allowing things.

There are good reasons to restrict tobacco smoke, but to start from the idea that it's not "a right" is antithetical to everything about how our society is supposed to operate.

Agreed, Adamatari. I don't understand how someone could have any agreement the values of a free society and propose that the burden is on proving our right to do what we want rather than proving your right to restrict me from doing what I want. Sure, a democracy generally runs on the principle of majority rule, but I would hope most of us have enough tolerance to accept that others will do things that annoy us and that isn't a good enough reason to ban something.

I don't consider the fact that I'm annoyed by smoke a good enough reason to restrict anyone's right to smoke. The health issues are a more serious factor, but I'm not convinced that outdoor smoking is killing or seriously harming many people. How many would it take? I don't know, but I'll need to hear something convincing before I'm going to vote to ban others from enjoying something they like to do.

Sorry Adamatari, but your legal reasoning, as well civic lesson, is simply wrong. While our Constitution reserves to the States or the People rights, it doesn't in anyway prevent Congress or state legislatures from passing laws to regulate and control, even prevent, activities that are not rights. The number of things that are rights, thus subject to strict scrutiny, is considerably limited and is mostly associated with political and religious activities or defending oneself against criminal charges. There are some additional ones -- firearms, taking of property, for example -- that fall outside of this. There are lots and lots of things government can and does ban, from the use of marijuana to the kinds of ink used in printing presses.

The protection against the tyranny of the majority are rights. The majority can't control speech or religion or other protected liberties, but the majority most certainly does get to decide everything else. That is how a democracy works. In authoritarian regimes or oligarchies, a minority decides, but in a democracy, majority rules, with the exception of protected rights.

Smoking isn't a protected right. It doesn't even fall into the hazy penumbra rights, such as privacy or birth control. It is an act subject to complete and utter control by the majority.

Smokers need to come up with some reason the majority just doesn't vote their annoying habit out of all public and many private spaces, not because there is some scientific justification, but just because the majority doesn't want to be bothered by smoke, butts littered everywhere, and all the other unpleasantness associated with smokers. Whining on and on about "tyranny of the majority" and "smokers' rights" isn't going to cut much ice for very long. Too many people have just been bothered one too many times by a smoker who had to smoke right then and there and ruin something.

@MacAdvisor:

As a non-smoker, I find your intolerance extremely disturbing. Appalling, in fact.

I personally find the sight of fat people to be repulsive, to the point that it actually provokes a physical response. Does that give me the right to ban them from my sight? The fact is, if we want to remain an open and pluralistic society - a proposition which may be sorely tested should perspectives like yours become widespread - we all have to tolerate a good deal of behaviors from others that we may not like.

Because frankly, the kind of country you would have us living in does not sound very appealing to me. It would become a "tyranny of the majority", and if you are unable to see that then I truly worry for the kind of country we could become. Fortunately, however, I think there is a growing backlash against your brand of goody-goody, moralizing intolerance.

Oomingmak, I didn't state any moral principals or suggest my ideas flowed from some higher power. I am not even suggesting the banning of smoking is even a particularly good idea. I am, however, suggesting the world works in a particular way, good or bad, for me or against me. In democracies, reserved rights aside, majorities tend to get their way over the long term.

You and I already live in that country and have all of our lives. As both a gay man and a fat man, I support an open and pluralistic society. Being gay is Constitutionally protected (see Lawrence v. Texas), bring fat has not yet been decided, but I suspect banning fat people would raise sufficient personal privacy issues as to gain some protection. Being fat hasn't protected people from job discrimination (one can be fired for being too fat) or discrimination in the market place (airlines can charge extra for being too fat), so perhaps not.

However, fat people don't go around shoving food down other people's mouths. Fat people don't leave litter of fat people food over essentially ever square foot of open ground. Fat people haven't pushed their fat into other people's lives. Smokers, on the other hand, have been their own worst enemy. Shall we pick a public beach or river or hiking trial and see if there aren't hundreds of cigarette butts left behind? How many non-smokers can tell the tale of having something ruined by a smoker puffing away nearby, perhaps obliviously, often uncaringly? Too many and that's the problem. Smokers need to do something other than whine about losing their non-existent "right" to smoke. The more they push that angle, the more bans will succeed. Not my wish, not my morals, just the way things have worked.

Unless smokers find a path that stops annoying a large part of the population with their smoke, the trash, and their rudeness, they will lose the ability to smoke almost everywhere. Soft drink manufacturers have managed it. They've taken a rare treat that few enjoyed more than a few times each year and turned it into an everyday occurrence for millions. They taken a product with proven negative health consequences and made it ubiquitous. Soda cans are almost as omnipresent trash as butts, but we aren't banning sodas from the public square (schools, in some case, but only the vending, not the consuming).

Unless smokers find that path, I doubt smoking will survive this century.

Ridry:

Maybe if we make it unpleasant enough less morons will start smoking.

Note, I'm not saying anyone who smokes is a moron. I'm saying that with the price/stigma/medical knowledge anyone who starts smoking in this day and age is a moron.

I say we fine those who use "less" when "fewer" should be used. Ah, but that's free speech, which is constitutionally protected. Alas for me, because I (a non-smoker) find "less" rather than "fewer" far more annoying than the sight of someone smoking outdoors.

North Carolina seems similar to Saudi Arabia. Are you alowed to kiss on the street? Does it bother enough people? It does in Saudi Arabia.