Up In Smoke At ‘Portland Monthly’
It seems that in the February edition of Portland Monthly, they decided to join the throngs clouding the issue when it comes to the debate over legal bans on smoking in bars.
One need look no further than the title of their piece — “Inalienable Right or Hazard to Health?” — to see that they’re not so much interested in helping properly define the public policy issues as they are in engaging in the magazine equivalent of television’s sweeps month.
Now, I’ve written before about this debate (twice, in fact), in addition to spending a fair amount of time over at Portland’s Future Awesome discussing the issue.
I’ve said all along that I do consider the notion of worker health to be a legitimate issue for a public policy discussion. I’ve said as well that I have mixed feelings about it.
I’ve also said that there are elements to the debate which are not legitimate from a public policy standpoint, even though they are completely legitimate from the standpoint of personal opinion. And I’ve argued that anecdotal “evidence” of bar workers disliking a smoke-filled environment are irrelevant, because I can easily find anecdotal “evidence” of bar workers preferring a smoke-filled environment.
But to return to the title of the Portland Monthly piece, notice how it in essence characterizes the debate as being between a fairly unreasonable position versus a reasonable one — something that, in fact, actually mischaracterizes the debate.
As I’ve said, the worker health issue is up for grabs, and I’ve no problem with that debate taking place. For that matter, also legitimate is the question of the financial impact on bars when smoking bans arei mposed — but there are anecdotes and report on both sides of that, so I have no idea where the truth rests.
But everything else is irrelevant. And in reality, much of the so-called debate is between pro-smoking “inalienable right” arguments versus anti-smoking “inalienable rights” arguments.
As much as there are wingnut smokers who believe they have the right to smoke wherever they damn well please, there are as many wingnut non-smokers who believe they have an inherent right, for example, to be able to go to the bar two blocks from their house (say, Horse Brass) and not have to encounter smoke, rather than have to travel futher to go to a non-smoking bar (say, Doug Fir).
In essence, there are two distinct debates that outlets such as Portland Monthly like to conflate because it’s a better read. There’s the debate over worker health and financial impact on businesses. And then there’s the debate between personal and subjective opinion on smoking in and of itself.
The former is a legitimate public policy discussion. But the latter, all too often perpetuated by the media and hysterical partisans on both sides, is just smoke and mirrors.