When Do-Gooders Attack

Here's a simple question for you: To whom does the ultimate responsibility for your own health fall? Stupid question, right? In a reasonable world, your own health would be your own responsibility. Indeed, unless you are a young child, you have the freedom to choose what it is you eat, how much you exercise, and whether or not you smoke cigarettes. On top of being able to choose what exactly it is you do to your body, you, theoretically, can also choose when and where you do these things. In Surfside Beach, South Carolina, however, that's about to change.

Earlier this week, in the name of everyone's health and well-being, 4 of the 7 members of the Surfside Beach Town Council voted to outlaw smoking in public buildings. Barring a miracle, this bill will soon become law when, assuming all Council Members vote the same way, the second vote on it (which Town Council rules require) comes on July 24. Those supporting the bill have cited both concerns over second-hand smoke exposure and concerns over violations of, to quote the Ordinance's sponsor Judy Tuttle, people's "right to clean air."

Whatever the Hell that is.

Indeed, ever since the world discovered that, much to our surprise, smoking something filled with an addictive drug was, in fact, bad for one's health; cigarettes and the companies that make them have become some of the easiest targets for the word 'evil' since Adolf Hitler. Of course, as so often happens in America, anyone and everyone's righteous anger over cigarettes is somewhat misplaced. No doubt, it's easy to pick on a company like RJ Reynolds because, hey, they make cigarettes, and cigarettes are bad for you, and cause health problems, and these evil people not only make them but have the gall to market them, as well; yet, at the end of the day, making a product and marketing it is what all companies do, even ones like Anheuser-Busch, whose products can be equally as bad for your health.

Furthermore, and more to the point, it's much easier for all these people to decry an evil company rather dealing with their Aunt, Father, or friend who consciously decided to pick up a smoking habit back when they were 18. Consciously was the key word in that last sentence. Everyone in this country who smokes, does so of their own free will and at their own risk. If anyone is to blame for the ill-effects of second-hand smoke, it's partially those who actually smoke the cigarettes. Yet, to make them the sole culprits would be both irrational and irresponsible.

As non-smokers, we choose with whom we associate ourselves and which public places we frequent. Consequently, if I as a person am deeply concerned about the effect which second-hand smoke might have on my health, then I should probably avoid dating someone who smokes or frequenting Sports Bars. The government should not be the one looking out for my health - if I'm not sensible enough to take that responsibility upon myself then I better be prepared to pay the price when I age. Nevertheless, by proposing this smoking ban, that is exactly what the Surfside Town Council is doing: making the government, and not the citizens themselves, partially responsible for people's health.

Egregious as it might be, however, the Surfside Town Council's willingness to create a Nanny-state and relieve ordinary folks of the responsibility of their own health is not even the biggest flaw in this particular piece of legislation. Indeed, the biggest concern, for those of us worried about individual liberty, arises from the ease with which the Town Council feels it can regulate people's right to do what they please.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not in any way trying to support or condone smoking, but the fact of the matter is that smoking a cigarette is not illegal, thus leaving people free to do so. It may be bad for your health, but that simply does not give the government a right to regulate it. We have, in essence, a right or, if you will, a freedom to screw up our lives which is every bit as valid as the freedom we have to succeed and make something positive of our lives. We have the freedom to choose and must live with the results, it's simply not the government's job to try and hold us by the hand if we make the wrong choice. In a similar vein, since when can a government, at any level, step in and tell a private business, such as a restaurant, what they may or may not allow within the confines of their property? If a restaurant owner wants to have smoke-free premises, that's his choice, but it's simply not something that the government can mandate.

As American citizens we have been given a truly unique and awe-inspiring brand of freedom, but with that freedom comes responsibility and with responsibility comes consequences. These three things are inter-related and will be forever connected; thus, when any part of the American government, be it the U.S Congress or a simple Town Council, as in Surfside, tries to eliminate or alter one of the three they will do so to all three. The Surfside Town Council believes that it is a Government's place to step in and try to alleviate us of the responsibility to manage our own health and to try and eliminate the unfortunate consequences of others' poor ability to do so; what they have failed to realize, however, is that in doing so they are also compromising and eliminating some of these same people's freedoms - and that is most certainly not their job.