Calabasas Here I ComeCalabasas, a suburb of Los Angeles has taken the statewide smoking ban a step further and banned smoking just about everywhere.

"We just don't want anyone blowing smoke in someone's face. Unfortunately, what smokers do is harmful to everybody else. People should have the right to breathe clean air," said Dennis Washburn, mayor pro tem.

I've said it before and I'll say it again, as someone who finds cigarette smoke abhorrent, I love the smoking bans. However, the libertarian side of me tends to think smoking bans for restaurants and other public establishments are just one more example of the government stepping in where it doesn't belong. If people really cared about this issue, they could just as easily choose to support only those establishments that provided truly smoke-free environments. Back when I lived in State College, PA where there was no city-wide ban, I know I always gave preference to the few restaurants that excluded smoking by choice.

However, smoking in truly public places, likes parks and sidewalks, is another issue. Individual businesses have no say over these areas. And yet, the rest of us who want to breathe clean air still have to put up with secondhand smoke. So maybe Calabasas is onto something. If we're going to have smoking bans like this, doing it at the city level is the way to go. That way, smokers and non-smokers alike can choose to live where they choose: in smoke-free Shangri-Las or putrid cesspools of poison gas.

Posted by Hey Paul   |   Sunday, March 19, 2006