As a smoker who has long enjoyed it, I congratulate Pierre Lemieux on his
analysis of the economics of smoking. Alas, he is self-consciously naive in
one respect: namely, in his supposition that there is any rational public
argument over smoking in the United States. As a bemused observer in New
York for the past decade (which is not the worse place in the United States, as far as
smoking laws are concerned), the first thing I noticed when this whole
debate began in the late 1980s, was that reason was tossed out the window.
Professor Lemieux's noble but hopeless attempt to bring logic to bear on the
matter ignores the basic purpose of the public campaign: it was (and is) to
end smoking, period. It was evident, from the outset, that the initiatiors
of the public campaign did not have anything but this purpose in mind. It
is, plain and simple, a direct violation of the individual's right to choose
and the framers of the debate knew that. What they felt was simply that
smoking was a sufficiently serious health risk to merit such a violation.
Naturally, the disaster of Prohibition is still too recent for a "law" to be
passed against it. But a carefully sustained psychological campaign might
do it. And it is psychological—in my understanding, the purpose of the
laws in airplanes, restaurants and public spaces was not about "second-hand"
smoke. It was precisely geared to make a smoker feel like a "social
pariah" and thereby induce him to quit. That was all there was to it.
Why haven't smokers "fought back" and "demanded" their rights or
highlighted the reasoning given in articles, like the excellent one of Professor
Lemieux? Firstly, the targets of the campaign are (relatively-speaking) the
poorer segments of our society. Secondly, they are too embarassed: they
know their smoking causes externalities and that they are at least partly
guilty of half the accusations against them.
Smokers are not stupid. They make the calculation and take it. We are
certainly aware of the health risks (yes, every smoker knows that it is not
a healthy habit—and they do not need a surgeon-general's warnings to
realize that; their bodies tell them soon enough).
But I believe smokers were surprised by the campaign. One can understand
that the Surgeon-General's office and other health officials should wish to
push for lower smoking in the population—that is their metier. What I
believe utterly surprised smokers was the literal armies of unaffected,
unrelated people that signed up as foot-soldiers in this "war"—and I am
not referring to opportunistic legislators.
I have lived in many places in my life—including notoriously totalitarian
places such as the Soviet Union and under African dictatorships. But I must
admit I don't think I have ever come across "groupthink" as intense, as
ferocious, as widespread, as unreasonable and inexplicable as the one that
has come around in the United States over the smoking issue. No other issue
in modern society seems to suffer from this single-mindedness. The public
debate on drugs, guns, etc. and other social ills have several sides to it.
The smoking debate is more like a one-sided conversation.
So once again, let me congratulate Professor Lemieux for trying to make the
smoking debate more like, well, a debate.
Goncalo Fonseca
