Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis warned, “Experience should teach us to be most on our guard to protect liberty when the government's purposes are beneficent.” Congress has taken upon itself the beneficent purpose of protecting us from the health hazards of tobacco. During the 1960s, their method was to require manufacturers to label their product with health warnings. During the next three decades, they restricted cigarette consumption in public and private places such as airports, airlines, restaurants, office buildings. None of this was completely satisfactory to what I call lifestyle Nazis. In 1998, with the help of state officials they attempted to legislate confiscatory taxes on tobacco consumption.
What has happened with tobacco regulation ought to set off panic buttons for all Americans, even among those who support what Congress is doing to cigarette smokers and the tobacco industry. The warning is that if we allow Congress to control products in the name of public health, lowering the cost of health care and protecting the nation's children, what activity can possibly escape future control? Salt consumption threatens health. So does caffeine, fatty foods, overeating, and overdrinking, not to mention a host of safety risks such as swimming, biking, skiing, and football.
There is absolutely no moral argument or constitutional authority for Congress's and state governments’ war against tobacco consumption. Many might consider cigarette smoking a vice that ought to be eliminated; however, vices are not crimes. A smoker does not violate the property rights of others such as in the case of theft, rape, and murder. Vices might not be in the best interests of a person; that's a case for admonishment, cajoling, and criticism and not a case for coercion, fines, or imprisonment.
Some people argue that cigarette smoking annoys others and may even damage their health. That is a problem solved by private property rights. For example, a place of employment is private property. The owner has the right to decide whether smoking is allowed in his workplace or not. He should simply tell prospective employees that he permits (does not permit) smoking on the job. A prospective employee, so informed, has the right to decide whether he wishes to work under those conditions. Another argument is that smoking raises health care costs and some of that cost is borne by taxpayers; therefore, when people are free to smoke they impose costs on others. That is not a problem of liberty; that's a problem of socialism. No moral case can be made for the government forcing one person to pay for the health care needs of another.
There is another lesson from the antismoking campaign from which we all can benefit. Philosopher David Hume said, “It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once.” When people seek to destroy a liberty, the most viable strategy is to do it piecemeal. Had the antismoking people revealed and demanded their full agenda back in the 1950s and 1960s, when they were trying to get nonsmoking sections on airplanes, they would have encountered so much resistance that they might not have gotten any of their demands. They chose the strategy of starting out with small, eminently reasonable demands. Emboldened by a succession of minor successes, they escalated their demands into the unreasonable and oppressive.
Environmentalists employ tactics similar to the antismoking crusade: exaggeration, panic, and fraudulent science. To disagree with the environmentalist agenda is not the same as calling for polluted air and water. We should apply common sense to our efforts to have less polluted air and water because to rid ourselves of any given level of pollution may not be worth what we have to sacrifice. An exaggerated example makes the point. Los Angeles has considerable pollution. If I were elected the city's mayor, and given the power, I could eliminate pollution virtually overnight. I'd simply pass laws banning all motor vehicle operation and all manufacturing activity. There would be no pollution in Los Angeles, but would the gain in cleaner air be worth the cost? Nobody recommends such a proposal, but there are EPA regulations where the costs and benefits are ignored, where the public is given frighteningly false information, and where the regulations are backed up by knowingly fraudulent science.
Health, environmental, and related issues are discussed in this section. Some of the discussion should make us pay more attention to Brandeis's warning about government doing good.