The Race to Ban What's Bad For Us

Trans fat, smoking, foie gras--what's next?

Nick Gillespie | December 11, 2006

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But even when bans do have an impact that most of us would agree is positive, one-size-fits-all actions leave no place for individuals to make some intensely personal choices.

They ignore the evolving social arrangements--such as non-smoking sections, not to mention smoke-free businesses--that give people, especially the 20 percent of adults who still light up regularly, more options rather than fewer. By the time Washington state passed its ultra-restrictive smoking ban last year--a law that outlaws lighting up even in cigar bars!--80 percent of restaurants there were already tobacco free.

Most important, these bans reduce all of us to the status of children, incapable of making informed choices. Is it quaint to suggest that there's something wrong with that in a country founded on the idea of the individual's rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness?

Nick Gillespie is editor-in-chief of Reason. This article originally appeared in the Chicago Tribune.