American Legion Post 149 in Bremerton considers itself to be a private club, exempt from the statewide smoking ban. The nannies at the Kitsap County Health District disagree and have spent more than a year suing Post 149 to prohibit smoking at its facility.
The State Supreme Court has agreed to hear the Post's appeal. Oral arguments are set for November 6th.
(I appreciate the ban on smoking in public places. But the American Legion post is a private club. Sheesh. Don't the public health authorities have better things to do?)
Posted by Stefan Sharkansky at September 21, 2007 12:28 PM | Email ThisFace it people hate smoking that's why the people of this state have continuously voted to increase the tax on it before voting to outright ban it in public places (passed by 63%).
Personally, I hated breathing other peoples smoke, I hated coming home smelling like an ashtray. Why should I have to suffer because some person wants to slowly kill themselves while polishing off a few beers.
Looks like the Veterans Hall should be exempt because they don't up their facilities to the public.
There is the 25 foot rule they may think exempts them.
Posted by: swatter on September 21, 2007 03:09 PMUsing your hyposthesis, the government should have no right to force restaurant workers to wash their hands or the owners from serving food that doesn't make you sick. There is something called the commerce clause of the constitution. You remember that document don't you, the one you said you beleived in???
As for the American Legion Post (which I declined to join when asked because of the smoking) I think you may have a point of it being more of a private club. But then you go on with your general diatribe and totally blow your whole point.
Commerce can and is regulated in this country. Just because you own some land doesn't mean you get do whatever you wish. For example, Allan's neighbor cannot store nuclear waste in his backyard.
Posted by: pbj on September 21, 2007 05:06 PMEvery effort to legislate thought and behavior that harms only the individual doing the behavior is another nail in the coffin of liberty.
Posted by: Deadwood on September 21, 2007 06:10 PMCato, I'm surprised at you!
In a Republic, the tyranny of the majority may not violate the rights of the minority. If you want YOUR rights defended, then you must stick up for the rights of others. What if you loved to play golf, but the majority passed an initiative to outlaw it? That would violate our right to liberty, because in playing golf, we violate no-one else's rights.
Well, if someone smokes in a private bar or restaurant, they don't hurt your rights because you have no right to access to a private bar or restaurant. You enter only with the consent of the owner.
Public parks and municipal buildings, etc. are different.
Look, I'm a non-smoker, and I hate smelling it as well. Smoking is a terrible, unhealthful addiction and I hope more people have the strength of will to quit. But I have no right to tell private bar owners what to do in their establishments. There were plenty of non-smoking places before the ban. More were going non-smoking because the market was working! There was demand for non-smoking places and I patronized them.
I defend gun-owners rights, gay rights and pot-smokers rights for the same reasons, even though I exercise none of these rights myself.
Rights do not come from governments. Rights are defended by good governments. The purpose of our government is to defend our rights, not to enable the tyranny of the majority to take our rights away. And that is just what this smoking ban is.
Read "The Democracy Gang" chapter from Ken Schooland's famous book "The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible."
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on September 21, 2007 08:20 PMHear! Hear!
Posted by: Bill H on September 21, 2007 08:41 PMBut I agree that the American Legion is a private club, not a public accomodation, so different rules apply. They have every right to give themselves emphysema.
Posted by: Tom on September 22, 2007 09:17 AMWhat people should do is go after the government funded gay-porn that is distributed in those bath houses. It may be delivered by a non-profit, but that non-profit gets its money from somewhere (can you say King County?)....
Posted by: Right Foot on September 22, 2007 10:13 AMThat's part of the problem of having an initiative process to "supplement" the legislative process. Oh well.
Posted by: pudge on September 22, 2007 10:44 AMWhat an ignorant old fool you are indeed. From where is the government's right to tell a business to have basic sanitary rules derive? Either you believe it does have the authority or it doesn't. If you think it does, please tell us all where that authority stems from. Or else please tell us that you don't think it has that authority. You cannot have it both ways.
You are confusing freedom of association with regulation of commerce. That straw man doesn't stand up to basic logic. No one is telling a business who their clientele must be. What they ARE doing is enforcing basic sanitary rules in places of commerce.
I realize it is more satisfying for you to argue from emotion rather than logic, but the constitution supports my position regarding places of commerce. To date, no challenge of this regulation of commerce has been upheld. Pouting about and going on about the commies coming to get us and all may make for nice liberal-esque street theater, but in the legal realm is is nonsensical. You know, the constitution that you pretend to lecture us about.
Now, it should be illegal for GOVERNMENTS to pass racist laws. The poll taxes and intelligence tests and the grandparent requirements that prevented blacks from voting in the Jim Crow era south violated the equal protection of our rights. But governments perpetrated these racist acts, not private people on private property.
Two wrongs don't make a right. There was a right way to do this, and a politically expediant way. We took the latter, and it set a bad precedent with respect to limited government and the equal protection of our rights.
We made businesses into "public accomodations" which was just an excuse to violate our liberty, to stifle entrepreneurship, and for politicians to shake down peaceful businesses. We'd be better off without these laws, especially today, now that there is a critical mass of people who believe, as you and I do, that racism is evil and stupid.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on September 22, 2007 07:08 PMRecently, OJ Simpson and his entourage tried to eat at a restaurant. The owner did not approve of what OJ almost certainly did to his ex-wife, and gently told him that his business was not wanted there, and he left peacefully.
If this restaurant were a "public accomodation" then the restaurant owner would not have had the right to kick OJ out. The government would set standards that precluded discrimination based on race or past offenses that had already been processed by the judicial system.
What about a known racist at a restaurant?
I think the owner of a private place of business can kick you out for any arbitrary reason he or she wants to. A business owner can fire you for any reason, and a landlord can decide to rent to you or not renew your lease for any reason. And if you or I find out that someone is doing any of these for racist reasons, it is our right to protest, boycot, shun, publicise and to do any peaceful, truthful act that helps to change things, (and we SHOULD!) but we may NOT take the easy way out and petition government to have a law passed to violate the biggot's right to freedom of association.
In purely private transactions, individuals have a right to be racist.
Augusta National can exclude women and jews, and as a result I will never patronize their establishment, or watch a Masters tournament held there. The Nazis can march in Skokie, but I won't attend or support them. The KKK can speak and organize and meet, as long as they do not lynch, burn crosses on property that they do not own, or in any way violate the equal, individual rights to life, liberty and property of another person.
And this smoking ban was one more attempt to have two wrongs make a right. We want fewer people to smoke. The world would be a better place if no one did. But we can't violate rights to liberty, free association, etc. to do it. Rights are too precious to infringe, and when you infringe them a little bit, you are down that slippery slope. I defend rights on principle. You should too.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on September 22, 2007 09:53 PMThink about it: if the right to free speech were held by a group instead of by each individual, then who would speak for the group? The majority would, and any minority opinion within the group would be squelched. Individuals would have no right to freedom of speech.
The same holds true for property rights and rights to liberty and even life, which are our fundamental rights. Any right said to be held by a group of people, such as "the public" is no right at all.
So rights are not held by groups or by "the public" as you write above.
The purpose of rights is to defend the minority from the tyranny of the majority, and the ultimate minority is the individual.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on September 22, 2007 10:05 PMMy position on this anti-smoking movement (and I am a non-smoker) is that each establishment should prominently display whether they allow smoking or not. People would then be free to patronize their establishment or not. I have moved to North Carolina in the last year and find that a number of places have gone non-smoking and they didn't need government to do it for them!
Posted by: Bill H on September 23, 2007 09:19 AMI have never seen food with bacteria on it with my naked eye. I don't carry a microscope with me to restaurants nor have I seen any other person do the same. The effect of food borne disease can cause severe and immediate death or disability. Exposure to tobacco smoke is very unlikely to cause more than some discomfort.
The Commerce clause is not carte blanche for tyranny - it was intended to allow for the free flow of commerce between the states.
Posted by: Jericho on September 23, 2007 03:30 PMThey are passed in the interest of public health. If we're really going to SERIOUS about public health and smoking, then just make cigarettes and smoking ILLEGAL in this state. Period. No more issue about a club, home, business, whatever and smoke.
Unless the State really doesn't care about the health issue more than it cares about the tax income it derives from sales of cigarettes? Does that mean our Democrat government in Olympia values dollars about health?
Posted by: Edmonds Dan on September 23, 2007 06:17 PMBanning cigarettes would violate our rights to Liberty, and would be just as unenforcible, and create worse black markets than marijuana and other drugs now do.
We own our own lives. Our lives are ours to destroy if we choose, so long as no one else has to pay for our health care.
So if there were a basic health care policy for the poor, provided by taxpayers, then the state could prohibit those who voluntarily sign up for it from smoking. But it is wrong to force people into a monopoly health care system as the Canadians now do.
This is the road to serfdom.
Instead, let's have private, charitable programs to help people stop smoking and to educate people about the bad effects of smoking.
Sin taxes are highly regressive, since the poor are more likely to smoke, drink heavily etc.
But the do-gooders in the nanny state of WA don't really care about the welfare of the poor. They care about looking like they are doing something so that the people will re-elect them. They care about increasing state tax revenue so they can have more power.
Posted by: Bruce Guthrie on September 23, 2007 08:52 PM