Cigarettes & Prostitutes

Following the trend of the rest of the European Union, smoking was finally banned in all public buildings in the Netherlands last year in July. Many neighborhood cafes around the country are going out of business because of the new regulations.

Many people were understandably outraged. What right does the government have to make such bans and take away our civil liberties? People should be free to do as they please, unless of course they infringe on the freedom of others. Non smokers are free to avoid smoke-filled cafes!

Of all the EU countries, the Dutch have been the most resistant to the new law. One cafe owner went to the extreme and moved his "bar" into a small storage closet, so that the rest of the building could officially be the smoking room!

In my thinking, such matters should not be up to government, but up to the free market. Were there enough people who disdained cigarette smoke, then more restaurants would open that do not allow smoking. The smoke-free restaurants would make huge profit, while smokers would still be free to acquire cancer in the locations that catered to them!

Some try to play the moral card; that smoking should be made illegal because it is bad. But I would say that people cannot be forced to be good. One can only be good when he has the freedom to choose. It's the government's job to establish justice, not to enforce a set of morals.

However, the argument that finally got me was the public health factor. Not the health of the public mind you (they can choose whether or not to expose themselves to a smokey environment), but the health of employees who have no choice but to be exposed to smoke all day because working in a cafe is the only job they can land.

Protecting the rights of cafe workers who don't smoke is what finally pushed the legislators into action, I think. And it makes sense... Peoples' freedom to smoke had begun infringing on other peoples' freedom to breathe clean air.

Well, Dutch government, I'm smelling some double standards here. It seems a bit funny to me, considering your new and intense concern for workers' well being, that prostitution is still legal and smiled upon!

What about the rights of women to work in an abuse-free environment? What about all those women who who cannot land another job?

If citizens are so helpless and incapable of making good decisions that the government needs to ban smoking to keep them from hurting themselves, why are they not banning prostitution? People should be free to do as they please, unless they infringe on the freedom of others.

Prostitution harms women as surely as smoke causes cancer.

Oh, but Sean, we must protect civil liberties! After all, we have an image to uphold...
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SPF