Think Of It As Air Space Eminent Domain

Neil Steinberg, Chicago Sun-Times, supports government reduction of property rights:

I’m generally a personal liberty, Milton Friedman, let-’em-buy-heroin-if-it-makes-’em-happy kind of guy. Yet I’m also always glad to see cigarette smoking restricted, basically, because it kills some people and annoys the rest (so would legal heroin, but heck, why be consistent? It’s summertime).

We seem to be doing it the right way, too, slowly whittling away the social space allowed to smokers. Smoking has gone from being cool to being an embarrassing personal lapse, somewhere between picking your nose and bedwetting. Soon the guy standing on the corner smoking a cigarette will carry the same cachet as someone standing on the corner sucking wine out of a bottle in a bag.

I’m not gloating. I’m sad for cigarettes — a lovely habit, a nice vice. Except for the kill-you part. But it’s in society’s interest to shuck them as soon as possible. Women used to paint their faces with white lead, but it had bad side effects, like death, so they got out of the practice. Habits change, if we’re lucky.

Sorry to join the cacaphony of people who only comment when they disagree with you, Mr. Steinberg, but the slow whittling is not of smokers’ rights, but property owners’ rights in many cases. Would you applaud it were the governments to start banning pasta in restaurants because of the obesity academic?

They wouldn’t do that? Why not? It’s a public health issue, and property rights mean nothing any more.

Perhaps we could just think of it as though the local governments were condemning the airspace within private property and offered just compensation in the form of their continued indulgence in the “owner’s” “right” to own/operate the property/business.

Update: Apparently, this set off William Squire: Neil Steinberg is a Bigot.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)