Washington D.C. politicians are considering nullifying the property rights of business owners, and forcing them to ban smoking in their establishments. The decision is being hailed in Montgomery County, where smoking is already banned and thousands of customers are hopping across the border to patronize businesses in the District. Meanwhile, anti-smokers have been ratcheting up the propaganda in support of both the Maryland and D.C. ban.

An estimated 53,000 people die each year from secondhand smoke nationwide -- Montgomery County Community Partnership Executive Director Doug Tipperman in the Washington Times in October.

"Secondhand smoke is estimated to cause 65,000 deaths per year in the United States." -- the "facts" according to Metropolitan Washington Council, AFL-CIO in November.

I wonder if the AFL-CIO has thought this all the way through. Although they are correct that studies show that bars and restaurants that survive the ban will probably do better in the long run, from an overall economic standpoint, there will be a huge loss of jobs and decreased competition. It only stands to reason that as restaurants leave the market, economic forces will eventually sway in favor of the survivors. Individual restaurants will probably see business taper off for 6 months or more, but as their competitors close up shop and lay off their employees, their business will recover. Overall, however, the economy suffers.

The real losers are Joe and Jane Bartender who will see a huge drop in their paychecks. They will also have much more time to enjoy breathing that cleaner air, on the second shift they'll need to pick up to make up for the lost wages. Bantheban.org points out that the "65,000 deaths" figure doesn't seem to be factually grounded, and is more than four times the homicide rate of the United States.

Meanwhile, businesses in New York are losing so much business because of the ban that the state is planning on letting them apply for waivers. Of course the pro-temperance nannies at the American Cancer Society are fighting the move. In response to claims that businesses are losing revenue, Michael Bopp had this to say (emphasis mine):

"Our first response is, prove it. It was always anticipated that there would be some minor, temporary disruption of business. But over time as other states and other municipalities have demonstrated, business comes back, once the consumers adjust to the new market place."

Bopp, who pushed for a smoking ban on the theory that secondhand smoke causes cancer, wants businesses to prove that they are suffering economically. (It should be noted that the World Health Organization studied the effects of secondhand smoke for 7 years and no matter how hard they tried, could not link secondhand smoke to cancer.) Bopp continued:

"Once they begin to grant waivers, there is a risk that some places will get off the hook and some places will comply and then you have an economic disaster looming where some businesses can't be competitive. The only way to keep it fair is to keep it consistent."

Bopp is admitting that the smoke ban is only effective at modifying human behavior if smoking is banned everywhere. Bopp says that by allowing some restaurants to permit smoking, there is an unfair competitive disadvantage to those that cannot permit smoking. If this is true, then it must also be true that banning smoking hurts businesses. Otherwise there would be no need to make the ban "consistent". By the way, by "consistent", Bopp means sea to shining sea and on all land public and private.