We Are Not Criminals

Smoking bans mean less business

The anti-smoking movement will tell you, over and over again, that smoking bans do not harm businesses. Two economists at the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis beg to differ:

Smoking was banned in all Illinois casinos in January 2008. We explore the effects that the smoking ban has had on Illinois casino revenue and attendance. Our empirical methodology extends and enhances that of previous literature in that we observe a natural experiment in comparing the performance of Illinois casinos with out-of-state casinos (no smoking ban) that share a market with Illinois casinos. Estimates suggest that revenue and admissions at Illinois casinos declined by more than 20 percent ($400 million) and 12 percent, respectively. Calculations reveal that casino tax revenue to state and local governments declined by approximately $200 million.

The study, Casino Revenue and the Illinois Smoking Ban was released in June by the Federal Reserve and written by Assistant Vice President Thomas A. Garrett and Michael R. Pakko (pictured above; just appointed Chief Economist & State Economic Forecaster at the Institute for Economic Advancement at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock) and is one of the strongest possible signals that smoking bans of all kinds have real impacts.

It also notes, quite clearly, that it’s hardly wise to take anti-smoking advocate claims about this subject at face value. The authors note on page 2 that “Research on the effects of a smoking ban on casino revenue has to date focused on the state of Delaware, which implemented a smoke-free law in December 2002. In the first study on the subject, Mandel, Alamar and Glantz (2005) found that the smoking ban in Delaware had a negative but statistically insignificant effect on gaming revenue. After correcting for errors in the Mandel, Alamar and Glantz (2005) study, Pakko (2006) found that the smoking ban in Delaware casinos resulted in a loss of $6 million, which represented a loss of over 12 percent relative to the average monthly revenue in the year preceding the smoking ban. In a subsequent study, Pakko (2008) examined the effect on individual casino revenue in Delaware as a result of the smoking ban, with a total revenue effect of approximately 15 percent. Finally, Thalheimer and Ali (2008) estimate a system of slot machine demand equations for the three Delaware casinos. They find that the smoking ban in Delaware reduced gaming demand by nearly 16 percent.” (Emphasis added; the Mandel, Alamar and Glantz study was produced by anti-tobacco activist researchers.)

The current study notes that in 2007, prior to the imposition of the smoking ban, Illinois casinos generated almost $2 billion in revenue and about $805 million in state and local governmental tax revenues. A careful review of the data from the Illinois casinos compared to competing casinos geographically close by in neighboring states of Indiana, Iowa, Missouri and Michigan showed that the smoke-free Illinois casinos had revenue drops of 20% and attendance drops of 10% in 2008 overall; the authors concluded that “the impact of the smoking ban on total admissions amounts to around 10 percent, with our point estimates indicating a downturn of 9 to 13 percent. These estimates imply substantial losses in tax revenue for the state and local communities which host casinos: total casino tax revenue was down by approximately $200 million.”

The only Illinois casino which did not see as much of an impact is located in Peoria and more than 90 miles away from the next closest gaming facility. That suggests that where smoking-allowed and smoke-free casinos are located close to each other, the smoking-allowed facility is going to do better absent other factors, but location and competition make a difference.

“Casinos aren’t the only businesses to suffer with legislated smoking bans,” added Chris McCalla, legislative director of the International Premium Cigar & Pipe Retailers Association (IPCPR). “And when business goes down, employees are eliminated or the businesses close. That means loss of jobs and loss of tax revenues. Nobody wins.

“We’re not against individual business owners declaring no smoking on their premises. It’s their right to do so. It’s local, state and federal governments that should not interfere with the rights of individuals.”

What about restaurants? Anti-smoking advocates shriek with authority that smoking bans do not hurt restaurants and bars, but in a footnote on page 1, Garrett and Pakko wrote:

“Recent studies include Phelps (2006), Adams and Cotti (2007), and Fleck and Hanssen (2008). Phelps (2006) and Adams and Cotti (2007) used nationwide county–level employment data and examined the change in employment in bars and restaurants after communities adopted a smoking ban. Neither study found significant employment changes at restaurants, on average, but both find statistically significant employment declines at bars, with loss estimates ranging from 4 percent to 16 percent. Fleck and Hanssen (2008) analyzed quarterly restaurant data for 267 California cities over 25 years. They find a statistically-significant 4 percent decline in revenue that is attributed to smoking bans.

The anti-smoking lobby wants people to think they have truth on their side. This new study, along with others it cites, begins to paint a much more balanced picture that is, in fact, much closer to the truth.

Stunning compilation of the tax burden on tobacco

In his closing essay to the Summer 2009 issue of Cigar Magazine, Lew Rothman essentially writes a farewell to the cigar industry, which he calls “in freefall.”

Between smoking bans, taxes and public disdain, smokers are in their most difficult era in centuries. Rothman notes the almost incomprehensible tax burden on smokers, with cigarette smokers faring the worst. While we’re not much interested in cigarettes here, Rothman’s calculations are too startling not to consider carefully:

“Under the guise of protecting the public and our youth from the dangers of the filthy tobacco weed, and through the continuous dissemination of trumped-up numbers pertaining to the amount of deaths and health care costs attributable to tobacco, the government has conveniently absconded with 90 percent of the revenue generated by the industry. That’s right – 90 percent of the money paid by the public on all tobacco products goes right into the coffers of federal, state and local government.

“Look, I don’t want to bore you with a million numbers, so let’s just look at the cost of one pack of cigarettes on Wall Street, since every news article seems to view that as the center of the universe during this economic downturn. Even of a company like RJ Reynolds or Philip Morris gave its cigarettes away free, and every tobacco distributor passed on the cigarettes to retail shops free, and every retail shop gave the cigarettes away free, the federal and state tobacco taxes alone, plus the 8.375 percent New York sales tax, would result in a price of $5.70 per pack!”

That is monstrous, and a lesson to those who value freedom. United States Chief Justice John Marshall, writing the majority opinion in the landmark McCullouch vs. Maryland decision way back in 1819, noted that “the power to tax involves the power to destroy.” That’s exactly what the anti-smoking lobby, aided by our government, is trying to do, as Rothman concludes:

I was always taught that government here in the United States was instituted to protect our individual rights. Today, it seems that concept has been changed to one where government gets to decide what our individual rights are. I fear for the future of our great nation. Things have gotten out of control.”

Smoking rights are just the start

There’s no doubt that 2008 has been a tumultuous year and on this holiday, it’s worthwhile to reflect on both the positives and negatives.

Certainly in the U.S., the economy and the election are the major features of the year and for cigar smokers, while the quality of cigars now in production is as good as it ever has been, places to enjoy them with friends are fewer and fewer.

Heinrich Villiger noted recently in an interview with the European Cigar-Cult Journal that “The ban on smoking, not only in Europe, but also in the USA, has already led to a clear stagnation of the growth of the premium cigar market sector,” adding that “the importers’ warehouses are anything but empty...”

There’s no doubt that the anti-smoking lobby continues to push hard against cigarettes, and cigars are simply swept up in the tide. But there were indications – albeit modest ones – that even non-smokers are beginning to appreciate the over-reaching of the antis.

Of special note is a December 23 essay titled “Blowing Smoke over Private Property Rights” by Russ Harding, director of the Property Rights Network at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market-themed research and educational institute headquartered in Midland, Michigan. Every cigar smoker who values a place to enjoy their hobby needs to read it, and it is reproduced here in full:

Although popular in some quarters, government-imposed smoking prohibitions are an assault on private property rights. So it's good news that the Michigan Legislature has acted wisely by leaving in place current law that allows businesses — including restaurant and bar owners — to decide for themselves whether to allow smoking on their property.

Smoking bans may not strike most people as an obvious government property taking in the same manner as seizing someone's home to make way for a new highway, but both are an erosion of the right to use one's own private property free from government meddling.

Special interest groups lobbying for the ban contend that second-hand smoke has negative health effects. For example, the American Lung Association points to a study by the California Environmental Protection Agency that estimated some 3,400 lung cancer deaths and 46,000 heart disease deaths occur each year in non-smokers due to second-hand smoke exposure.

These findings, however, are called into doubt by a 2003 article in the British Medical Journal that examined statistics from an American Cancer Society cancer prevention study that tracked 118,094 adults from 1959 to 1998. These kinds of long-term (longitudinal) studies using a very large sample are considered the gold standard of epidemiological research.

The focus of BMJ article was 35,561 people included in that large study who never smoked but were married to smokers. The authors concluded there was no statistically significant casual relationship between environmental tobacco smoke and tobacco-related mortality, although they did not rule out a small effect. The conclusion was that the association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed.

Smoking ban proponents also cite anecdotal evidence that the policy helps business at bars, restaurants, casinos and bowling alleys. The people who actually know what they're talking about, however, — the owners of these establishments — generally oppose laws that repeal their right to choose for themselves what to allow or not allow on their own property.

In fact, many restaurants have already chosen to not allow smoking. For some this is no doubt a good business decision. Forcing it on others will almost certainly cost them money, since every establishment is different, each with its own unique clientele who have their own particular tastes and preferences.

Since no individual is forced to work or dine at any particular establishment, and plenty of choice exists between smoking and non-smoking ones, shouldn't this be an area where we let freedom ring?

C.S. Lewis wrote: “Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victim may be the most oppressive . . . those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

Most Americans don't smoke, but they do own property. The issue today may be smoking bans, but tomorrow it may be prohibiting other individual choices in how to use your own property. The price of freedom is eternal diligence: Now is the time to say, "Enough!" when it comes to undue government interference with private property rights.

As indoor smoking is being completely eliminated – in some cities and states, even in smokeshops – and the antis work to eliminate smoking outdoors, Harding’s commentary is a warning.

The only ways to push back against this tide is by involvement in the public process and through court challenges. Cigar smokers must, it is sad to say, monitor the legislative process and protest as loudly as possible whenever further smoking bans are proposed. The anti-tobacco forces have religious zeal in their push to try and eliminate smoking worldwide and have made local and national governments a willing accomplice in many places. But not all.

In Los Angeles, a dedicated group of smokers, retailers and manufacturers has been quietly speaking with members of the City Council and their staffs about the various proposed smoking ban extensions since a proposed outdoor dining area ban was brought before a Council committee last August. Over the past five months, Council offices have been meeting with both the anti-tobacco lobby and with pro-cigar groups thanks in significant part to assistance from the Cigar Rights of America grass-roots support group. The result has been a much more balanced view of the issues faced by smokers, as market forces have reduced the number of restaurants with outdoor dining areas to well less than 10%. We are the minority that should be protected, in the consumption of a legal product. That message was heard and although not popular with some, has resonated with elected officials whose mandate is to serve all of the people of Los Angeles and a compromise that both sides can agree with is being sought.

The Kansas City Council was similarly lobbied by smokeshops and especially by Outlaw Cigar Co. owner Kendall Culbertson to carve an exception for smokeshops into the voter-approved smoking ban. After some months of effort, a very modest exemption was created, a victory for common sense, but one which was jeered by the antis.

And in Dallas, what was expected to be a rollover win for the anti-smoking forces to impose a much wider smoking ban ended with the Dallas Morning News characterized as a modest expansion of the existing ban to bars and billiard halls.

Even in Boston, where the “Public Health Commission” approved a very wide expansion of the city’s smoking ban, pressure from cigar-bar owners won a 10-year reprieve from closure with a procedure to allow an even longer exemption.

Pressure works and if we are to enjoy cigars anywhere in 2010, 2015, 2020 and beyond, we have to be activists and politicians as well as cigar enthusiasts.

Tobacco-control research prof rips Parks' proposal

Dr. Michael Siegel is a physician and professor at Boston University who has devoted more than 20 years to research and study of the effects of smoking. He posts comments on tobacco policy on his blog "The Rest of the Story" at TobaccoAnalysis.blogspot.com.

A particularly relevant post was pointed out to me from August 13, 2008, in which Siegal comments on the Bernard Parks motion to ban smoking almost everywhere in Los Angeles. This is an excerpt from a much longer post, but it’s worth reading carefully:

The ordinance would ban smoking in every outdoors location where people "reasonably congregate." Essentially, this means that there would be no outdoors smoking anywhere, with the exception of some dark deserted alleys. If enacted, this would be the most restrictive smoking ban in the nation.

The Rest of the Story

I now understand why anti-smoking advocates and groups are distorting the truth. Because they are promoting such extreme proposals that go far beyond the documented scientific evidence that they need to create their own facts in order to justify these proposals.

You can't credibly argue that smoking needs to be banned everywhere outdoors to protect the health of nonsmokers using the actual truth about the severity of health risk from secondhand smoke exposure. There simply is no evidence that a few wisps of secondhand smoke, as one might encounter from someone smoking on a sidewalk or in a street, parking lot, or park puts people's health at risk and represents a significant public health problem.

The only way to advance these policies, then, is to artificially build up the severity of the harms of secondhand smoke so that you can convince people that any exposure - even a few wisps of smoke - is a severe health hazard.

This, I now realize, is the impetus behind the widespread fallacious claims that are being made by over 100 anti-smoking groups about the cardiovascular effects of brief secondhand smoke exposure.

I no longer believe that this distortion of the science, which goes right up to the level of the Surgeon General (who claimed that brief secondhand smoke exposure was sufficient to cause heart disease and lung cancer), represents a simple, innocent mistake.

It is now clear that this is part of a new agenda (one that I never thought was part of the movement) to extend smoking bans beyond workplaces, restaurants, bars, and other places where there is substantial exposure. The movement is now to virtually ban all smoking outside of the home, so that no nonsmoker ever has to even see a smoker in public.

There simply is no credible alternative explanation for claims - like this one - which are so absurd that they are patently false on their face. You need only think about it for about 3 seconds before you realize that secondhand smoke exposure cannot possibly be more harmful than active smoking.

The epidemiologic evidence obviously does not support such a conclusion. The relative risk of lung cancer associated with chronic active smoking is about 17. The relative risk for lung cancer associated with chronic secondhand smoke exposure is about 1.3. That's a 13-fold difference. It is intuitively clear that smoking is worse than breathing in secondhand smoke. This isn't an example of stretching or exaggerating the facts - it's an example of creating (i.e., fabricating) them.

I should point out that if you take this message seriously, then a rational nonsmoker might actually start smoking. After all, according to the message, it's better to smoke yourself than to be exposed to secondhand smoke. The message truly undermines the severe health effects of active smoking because it states that active smoking is less harmful than secondhand smoke exposure. Thus, the statement is not only fallacious, but it is a dangerous one which undermines years of education of the public about the severe harms of active smoking.

While the main reason why I object to the fabrication of the science is that I view it as unethical, I wish to point out that I also think it undermines our cause of protecting nonsmokers from secondhand smoke. It gives the public the impression (rightly so, apparently) that our goal is not just to save lives and prevent serious medical conditions but instead, that our goal is simply to protect nonsmokers from ever having to breathe in a wisp of secondhand smoke or see a smoker. It makes it appear that we are trying to prohibit smoking through the back door and that de facto prohibition is our real agenda, rather than a legitimate public health interest in protecting nonsmokers from a severe health threat.

To use a half-marathon analogy, I feel like I have been running a half-marathon and I get to the finish line and stop, but everyone else keeps running. I thought the goal was to provide a safe working environment for all employees and to protect nonsmokers from a substantial health hazard in certain outdoors locations where they cannot easily avoid tobacco smoke exposure. Instead, the movement just keeps on going, trying to ban smoking in every possible outdoors location and even starting to infringe upon the private home.

I feel all alone at the finish line, wondering where everyone has gone.

The rest of the story is that I have come to the conclusion that the distortion of the science by anti-smoking groups is not merely an innocent mistake or an uninformed interpretation of scientific evidence. It is, instead, a deliberate attempt to promote an extremist agenda by fabricating scientific evidence that will support an agenda that is simply not supported by the scientific truth.

The entire post goes on for a while, but it’s worth reviewing as it rips the cover off of the anti-tobacco movement now at work in Los Angeles.

Prohibition never works, but the antis are trying hard

The Royal College of Physicians in London, England issued a report last week that suggested ways in which tobacco smoking could be eliminated in Great Britain in20 years. The usual mix of extremely-heightened taxes and limiting exposure was suggested, along with the formation of a new governmental agency (of course) to regulate products with nicotine in them.

Our comment on CigarCyclopedia.com for September 11 included this historical perspective:

The Royal College of Physicians missile nowhere mentions making smoking illegal, but making it anti-social, hard to find and prohibitively expensive. Alcoholic-beverage Prohibition in the U.S. didn’t make drinking illegal either, but prohibited its manufacture, transport or sale.

When Prohibition came to America in 1920, 33 of the then-48 states were already dry. While not quite at the same level, Pennsylvania became the 25th state to adopt indoor smoking bans which became effective today. But national (alcoholic beverage) Prohibition failed in just 13 years because people wanted to drink. Tobacco prohibition will fail – as it has before – because there are plenty of people who want to smoke.

It’s not widely remembered that tobacco prohibition was also tried in the U.S. less than a century ago. In Gordon Dillow’s excellent article called "Thank You For Not Smoking" for American Heritage in 1981, he noted that cigarette sales were banned by state law in Oklahoma in 1901, followed in later years by Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. Of these 13 states with cigarette prohibitions, six had repealed their laws by 1917 and ten had dropped the subject by 1921. Utah was the last to give up the fight in 1923.

The chief campaigner against tobacco was an Illinois woman named Lucy Paige Gaston, whose efforts were similar to those of the more-famous Carrie Nation against alcoholic beverages. But having failed, as Nation did, in her try at prohibition, Gaston ironically died of throat cancer in 1924.

The Spanish philosopher George Santayana wrote in Reason in Common Sense (1905), "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." It appears the anti-tobacco activists are ready to relive another failure over the succeeding 20 years.

Op-Ed submitted to the Los Angeles Downtown News

The following editorial was submitted to the Los Angeles Downtown News on August 19; there is no guarantee of publication, of course, but it notes the practical impact of the August 8 Motion introduced by Councilman Parks.

"THIS IS THE POLICE; WE’D LIKE TO SPEAK WITH YOU"

Imagine a knock on your door on a weekday evening, or a weekend afternoon. A Los Angeles Police officer wants to speak with you, to find out if you were smoking a cigarette or a cigar or a pipe in the hallway of your apartment building.

Or on a street corner. Or in a parking lot. Or in back of your office building, in the open air.

If City Councilman Bernard Parks has his way, the officer will cite you, or perhaps arrest you for using a legal product: tobacco. On August 8, Parks introduced a motion asking the City Attorney to draft an ordinance to ban smoking essentially everywhere in the City of Los Angeles, and a Resolution asking the County to do the same.

My research shows that there about 384,000 adult smokers resident in the City and about 998,000 in the County. Compared to the City’s police force of 9,600, that’s at least a 40-1 ratio of smokers to officers in the City and the ratio gets even larger in the County. Parks has stated in an online editorial that his no-smoking ordinance should not impose any significant burden on the police. Huh? Is that because he expects the police to just ignore smokers, or will enforcement be on a "sometimes" basis?

What’s worse, criminalizing smoking will have the horrifying effect of creating an entirely new reason why police can stop and question someone. Even if you’re not a smoker, are the police simply allowed to ignore a call from a trouble-making neighbor who accuses you – living in the apartment across the hall – of smoking in the hallway . . . even if you don’t smoke?

This is a dangerous aspect of Parks’s proposal, not to mention the drain on not just the police, but also the City Attorney’s Office, who must prosecute these cases. Will tourists also be cited or arrested? What about the homeless who smoke?

Parks says he wants to eliminate outdoor smoking because of the threat from secondhand smoke. In fact, there is no health threat from passing exposure to secondhand smoke and the 2006 Surgeon General’s report on the subject never even mentions such a threat.

Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Boston University School of Public Health and a long-time supporter of indoor smoking bans, is dead-set against outdoor bans and he explains why in a recent blog entry about a similar ban in tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com:

"There is clearly no need to ban smoking in every outdoor location in a city in order to protect nonsmokers from the hazards of tobacco smoke exposure. Banning smoking on every street and in every sidewalk, alley and parking lot is simply not justified by any science which demonstrates that exposure to secondhand smoke in these locations represents a significant public health problem."

He also notes that the same justifications used "to ban smoking in virtually all outdoors locations could also be used to ban the consumption of fatty foods in public, or even to ban obese people from public places."

Councilman Parks, in a tight race for a Supervisor post against former City Councilman and current State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas, has gone too far. Please withdraw your motion; I am a smoker, but I am not a criminal.

(Mr. Perelman, a life-long resident of Los Angeles, works in the Wilshire Center area and is the editor-in-chief of CigarCyclopedia.com. A Web site on this issue has been created entitled WeAreNotCriminals.com.)

Op-Ed submitted to the Los Angeles Business Journal

The following editorial was submitted to the L.A. Business Journal on August 19; there is no guarantee of publication, of course, but it notes how Councilman Bernard Parks’ request for a ban on outdoor smoking follows a past, failed course of action:

PROHIBITION FAILED ONCE, IT WILL FAIL AGAIN

American philosopher George Santayana’s famed observation in Reason in Common Sense that "Those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it" was penned more than 100 years ago. Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks has shown that he has either forgotten it or prefers to ignore it.

On August 8, Parks introduced a motion in the City Council asking the City Attorney to draw up an ordinance that would ban smoking in all public places where people would gather, including the common areas of apartment buildings. He says his proposal wouldn’t ban smoking per se, but would eliminate most of the negative effects of smoking on the public.

In other words, he’s in favor of Prohibition, but this time of tobacco.

It didn’t work with alcohol and it won’t work with smoking, either.

The 18th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1920, didn’t ban the consumption or possession of alcoholic beverages. Instead, it stated that "the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited."

Instead of eliminating drinking, it sent it underground, fostered the manufacture of "bathtub gin" and other substitutes that were often much more dangerous than the liquors it replaced, and jump-started the formation of organized crime on a national basis. Prohibition was such a failure that it is the only amendment to the Constitution to be repealed, in 1933.

Parks claimed in an editorial on the CityWatchLA.com Web site that his proposal wouldn’t impact the police, but who’s going to hand out tickets or make arrests of smokers who light up on the street, in a parking lot or walking into their own apartment? At the current level of 9,600 sworn officers and an estimated 384,000 City residents who smoke – not even counting an additional several hundred thousand who work in the City – there would be an average of one officer for every 40 smokers. Tracking smokes down should keep our police pretty busy and eliminate the time spent on less-important efforts such as gang intervention, traffic control, drug interdiction, burglary, robbery, rape and murder.

Prohibition is bad policy and the criminalization – if Parks has his way – of up to 998,000 people in Los Angeles County is bad politics. If Parks wants to eliminate smokers from hanging around in front of buildings or on street corners, smoking lounges should be authorized – with blacked-out windows – where those who smoke can go to consume a legal product, hidden away from the non-smoking majority.

But then, we would have learned from history instead of trying Prohibition again, a century after the first try failed.

My op-ed submission to the Los Angeles Times

I sent the following commentary to the Los Angeles Times Op-Ed section on Tuesday, August 12; it is unknown if they will use it:

I’M A SMOKER, NOT A CRIMINAL

by Rich Perelman

Who does Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks think he’s kidding?

Trailing State Senator Mark Ridley-Thomas in the November race for County Supervisor, Parks has decided to garner public attention by making criminals out of about 384,000 citizens of the City of Los Angeles and 989,000 in the County of Los Angeles.

He wants to ban smoking essentially anywhere. On street corners, on the sidewalk, anywhere you can think of on public property.

In an August 12 editorial on the CityWatchLA.com Web site, Parks demonstrated his complete disregard for anything close to the truth about smoking in his very first sentence:

"Secondhand smoke is the number one cause of preventable health disease in America. There are no questions regarding the negative health effects. Research has shown that inhaling secondhand smoke is more harmful than actually smoking, primarily due to the unfiltered nature of the smoke and its having been cooled by the air."

Let’s give Parks the benefit of the doubt and simply assume he hasn’t read the research. As the editor of CigarCyclopedia.com, a site about cigars that drew 1.6 million visits in 2007, I follow smoking legislation and research closely. There is no research anywhere that cites secondhand smoke – especially in outdoor settings – as anything close to the health risk of direct smoking. In fact, the chemical nature of so-called environmental tobacco smoke is considerably diluted with exposure to outdoor air and wind. Perhaps Mr. Parks just made this up for effect.

He can color this any way he wants, but simple mathematics show that his proposal tells almost a million people in Los Angeles County that they are subject to criminal penalties because they enjoy a legal product: tobacco.

Even some anti-tobacco advocates sees this kind of legislation as counter-productive and silly. Dr. Michael Siegel, a professor in the Boston University School of Public Health and a long-time supporter of indoor smoking bans, is dead-set against outdoor bans and he explains why in a recent blog entry about a similar ban in tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com:

"There is clearly no need to ban smoking in every outdoor location in a city in order to protect nonsmokers from the hazards of tobacco smoke exposure. Banning smoking on every street and in every sidewalk, alley and parking lot is simply not justified by any science which demonstrates that exposure to secondhand smoke in these locations represents a significant public health problem."

He also notes that the same justifications used "to ban smoking in virtually all outdoors locations could also be used to ban the consumption of fatty foods in public, or even to ban obese people from public places."

Perhaps the svelte Mr. Parks has these in mind as well.

Parks claims in his editorial, "This is not a request that will drain law enforcement resources but primarily would be a code enforcement activity via either an infraction or misdemeanor." This is, in my view, simply a lie, since Parks – for 36 years a member of the Los Angeles Police Department and chief from 1997-2002 – knows that enforcement of infractions and misdemeanors is done by the Los Angeles Police Department and then prosecuted by the already-overloaded City Attorney’s Office. Isn’t their time better spent continuing their efforts to fight violent crime, gang activities and enforcing existing Municipal Code prohibitions against graffiti and drug use?

If this ordinance passes, how can police patrols even consider doing anything else than make arrests or issue citations any time they see two or more people smoking on the street? Or will they simply ignore it and leave this law either unenforced or enforced only on a random basis?

Parks is wrong when he says that outdoor secondhand smoke is a serious health threat. It is not.

If he wants to help smokers quit, the city can provide free counseling and anti-tobacco education. If he wants to take smoking off of the streets, then the establishment of specific, adults-only facilities – with blackened windows – for tobacco smoking should be licensed where those who wish to indulge are welcome and those who do not want to be around tobacco smoke can stay away.

But to pander to the non-smoking population and say that people who consume a legal product are criminals smacks of a return to widespread, government-enforced discrimination that should never even be contemplated in a society supposedly built on individual freedoms and tolerance.

Councilman Parks, please withdraw your motion, now.

Daily Breeze rips Parks' proposals

In the wake of the August 8 request by Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks to ban all outdoor smoking in both the City and County of Los Angeles, the South Bay Daily Breeze, which covers the Torrance, Long Beach and San Pedro areas fired back with this editorial entitled "Cut smokers some slack" on Sunday, August 10:

"Someone tell Los Angeles City Councilman Bernard Parks that it's time for a cease-fire in the War on Smoking.

"Yes, smoking is a terrible, costly, self-destructive habit. And yes, society should do whatever it reasonably can to dissuade people from lighting up. But the smoking ban that Parks is calling for in the city of Los Angeles steps clear into the realm of the unreasonable.

"Parks, who is vying in a fall runoff campaign to succeed retiring Second District Supervisor Yvonne Burke, also wants the county Board of Supervisors to adopt a similar anti-smoking plan. Parks would like to see the policy enacted by all the cities in the county.

"In the wake of the comprehensive ban on public smoking that Calabasas enacted in 2006, Parks now wants L.A. to ban smoking pretty much anywhere non-smokers may be present - which is to say, everywhere.

"‘Smoke has no boundaries,’ Parks says. ‘You should smoke only where you are hurting only yourself.’ He adds, ‘We're not trying to get into people's bedrooms and homes.’

"The problem is, those two comments are contradictory.

"Parks is right: Smoke does have no boundaries. That's true even for cigarette smoke that wafts from one's front porch into a neighbor's yard. Once the law protects non-smokers from ever having to sniff even a microscopic trace of smoke, it must necessarily intrude into people's homes - or bedrooms, should the window be open.

"That's legal overkill.

"While secondhand smoke can be dangerous, especially in large amounts, that's simply not the case with the fumes from a smoker who just so happens to be walking by outdoors. In L.A., a pedestrian walking on the sidewalk has far more to fear from the exhaust of passing cars than from the lingering residue of a fellow pedestrian's cigarette.

"L.A. is a city that prides itself on its tolerance. City residents could do a little more to be tolerant of the smokers among them - friends and loved ones, all.

"We can protect Angelenos from the real dangers of secondhand smoke - and enact policies to dissuade smoking - without getting into the business of making life needlessly difficult for people just because they are saddled with an unpopular addiction.

"When the War on Smoking turns into the War on Smokers, it's time to call it quits."