The P-I Blows Smoke

In an editorial today, the P-I's editorial board declares that the debate on secondhand smoke is over and that the Surgeon General is the only trustworthy voice on the matter. Perhaps the graybeards in the edit suite have inhaled some non-tobacco smoke, because the debate about secondhand smoke is far from over.

To whit, Dr. Michael Siegel—an anti-smoking activist of long-standing—today goes after the Surgeon General for saying things to the media that departed from the science in his own report. Siegel does everything but call the SG a liar (there are still substantial questions around what concentration and length of exposure it takes for secondhand smoke to have health effects on non-smokers), and a hysterical one at that. But there's more, including the usual sober analysis from Reason's Jacob Sullum. And there's some more from Sullum and some more from Townhall.com.

Face it, the SG's report is little more than a political document and reminds me of the FDA's weird efforts to restrict women's access to birth control.

The one vaguely interesting point in the P-I's blather was its call for a "gentle revision" of the 25-foot rule. (For the record, I make my own gentle revisions to it each day and cannot wait for local tobacco czar Roger Valdez to come ticket me.)

The law requires more than a revision, however. The 25-foot rule needs to be struck from the books completely. It's unenforceable and it's illegal, in my view. Business owners do not own the sidewalks in front of their shops, nor do they have any law enforcement rights there, for example. Illegal, too, is King County's decision to declare the area's one-sided bus shelters "buildings" subject to the 25-foot rule. Once these inanities are challenged in court, the 25-foot rule will be swept away like so many copies of yesterday's P-I.

In addition, the workplace smoking ban should be revised to create exemptions for private clubs, cigar bars, tobacco stores, and the like. If people want to engage in risky behavior, then they should have places they can go without interference from either the law or rampaging nanny-statists. (I don't hear anyone calling for bans on gay bathhouses, after all.)

One thing that the P-I's editorialists were too chicken to take up is the question of where smokers can smoke in public. Because guess what? Smokers pay taxes, too (without representation, of course), and we have the same kind of rights to common places created with tax dollars as do clear-lunged joggers, whiny singer-songwriters, and uptight parents. It seems to me that there is a sensible middle ground out there that ought to be encouraged in the same way the good progressive-liberal Seattleites are always pining for "diversity" and "tolerance."

But then, that's the other thing the P-I—and the media in general—has skipped over: Nanny-statists don't want diversity and tolerance. They want compliance with their social preferences the same way that Christian conservatives want adherence to social norms contained in the Old Testament. The P-I has swallowed nanny-state thinking like a 5-year-old does Pixie Stix. I simply cannot wait to see the editorialistas under the spinning globe take up the strip-club measure that will be on the November ballot—or take up the matter of children with Pixie Stix, food being the next big target of the nanny-state crowd.