Smokefree Rights

One of the more important in tobacco prevention documents written in recent history is Samantha Graf’s There is No Constitutional Right to Smoke .  Published and updated in 2008 by the Tobacco Control Legal Consortium, the paper clarifies that due process and equal protection claims  to a right to smoke have been consistently denied by the courts.  If you haven’t enjoyed this paper yet it is highly recommended.

The confusion about a right to smoke is not an accident but the result of decades of tobacco industry deceit to the point of a 2006 conviction for racketeering and fraud under Federal statutes typically reserved for organized crime.  

A couple of years ago I had the pleasure of attending a local city council meeting where a smoke free skate park policy was being discussed.  The attitude was generally negative with one council person practically throwing a fit that his civil rights were being violated.  As an aside, the council person neither smoked nor skated.

Civil rights pertain to people not behavior.  The courts have been quite clear that there is no more civil right to smoke than there is to run naked in public or drive drunk.  Tobacco free policies are not about you but about children and the public health. 

Most recently it was learned the Little Rock City City Attorney’s office was in opposition to the policy over a concern for freedom of speech claims against tobacco free parks policies. This is specious to the point of absurdity. 

No one ever heard of a right to smoke until a couple of decades ago when public relations monolith Burson Marsteller started funding  and founding smokers’ rights front groups to challenge a growing trend for tobacco free public space and tobacco taxes. 

But what this shows is how successful the industry has been in its public relation’s measure, and in its fraud. Smokers are not a protected class nor is tobacco free space  an unreasonable reaction to regulating  hazardous conduct. 

Permissive tobacco policies are essentially a subsidy for tobacco companies and only serve to confuse corporate responsibility with personal rights, the right to protection from rogue capitalists.  We have a right to a  tobacco free environment, a human right...