Vote denying smoking ban rekindles the flame of liberty

Tuesday August 9, 2005

(Bowling Green, Kentucky) Monday's vote against a proposed smoking ban by the Cave City Council benefits both local citizens and those across the commonwealth.

Mayor Bob Hunt, who cast the tie-breaking vote, made it clear that smoking bans threaten private-property rights and the choices available to consumers.

"I voted not to pass a ban because I don't feel like government should tell private business owners who help support the city with their taxes what to do about smoking," Hunt told the Bluegrass Institute. "I respect those people who see this as strictly a health issue, but I also respect the man who has invested in his business and is trying to make a living."

Proponents offer the inaccurate perception that support for smoking bans is sweeping the state. Instead, Cave City becomes the second Kentucky community to rebuff persistent attempts to use the force of government to determine smoking policies for private businesses. The Elsmere City Council rejected a similar proposal in December.

Hunt's courageous vote serves as an example to policymakers across Kentucky, including members of the Louisville Metro Council, who will consider whether to approve a smoking ban Thursday night. The council's members should reject the reasoning that a smoking ban would, as ban activist Ellen Hahn told reporters recently, "put the city right in the mainstream of other American cities."

Trampling on the rights of private-property owners has never been a part of American mainstream thinking. Supreme Court Justice Louis D. Brandeis, a Louisville legend, must have been thinking of today's health nannies when he once wrote, "The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding."

To keep liberty's torch burning brightly, we can only hope Louisville's Metro Council acquires the same level of understanding on this issue as Mayor Hunt.

For interview information, contact Jim Waters, Director of Policy and Communications for the Bluegrass Institute. He can be reached at (270) 782-2140 or jwaters@bipps.org.