I read the editorial regarding the smoking ban with interest. No such thing existed when I was a student at Michigan in the 1970s. I began to smoke cigarettes when I was a sophomore. I managed to quit the New Year’s after my son was born in 1984.
I’ve seen the progression from warning labels to the first smoking restricted areas, to smoke-free workplaces, to cities banning smoking in all restaurants, to cities banning smoking altogether.
The stance taken by The Michigan Daily is notable for its altruism and for the values that guide the editorial board. Of course, this is the way the world should work. Freedom and choice is better than no freedom and no choice. Self-enforcement is better than peer-enforcement. A world without stigma is better than one with stigma.
But, that isn’t how the world works. As a nation, we’ve been struggling with this question for 50 years, going back to the early ’60s when the Surgeon General first publically announced smoking’s health risks. We’re all educated.
And we’re all free … mostly.
And smokers behave like addicts.
The Daily proposes the expense of dollars and resources in an effort to reduce or eliminate smoking, which are designed to affect this voluntary behavior. Hardly seems fair to the non-smokers. And, it won’t work. It never has.
I only managed to quit when I put myself in a position in which I had no choice. I couldn’t smoke. I found the lack of choice to be the only effective means of quitting. Freedom, no matter how precious, was the enemy of the effort. Absent a pricing solution that’s beyond our control, forced abstinence may be the only guarantee of achieving the desired result.
I think the Daily is asking, or addressing, the wrong question. Isn’t the real question one of cost and benefits? Is the societal cost of the ban worth the results? Is that loss of freedom worth the benefits of a smoke-free campus? I think that’s the only question, because the voluntary versus non-voluntary question has been settled.
All laws that restrict our freedoms should be viewed in this light. Consider laws that restrict drinking, freedom of speech, marijuana consumption or cigarettes.
As a society, we must place a very high value on personal freedom and only enact laws that restrict those freedoms when the benefits are clear and well-articulated. Only then are we able to make a decision based on the principles of a free democracy.
Is the cost of the ban worth the expected benefits? Tough question.
Jim Bush
1978 University alum