Smoking, personal freedom and public health
In the same week Congress was working on (and ultimately scuttling) a plan concerning the nation’s public health, officials and business owners in Columbus were debating one concerning the city’s.
The people who gathered at The Loft restaurant on Broadway Wednesday to talk about proposed smoking restrictions were dealing with some familiar tensions and values — personal liberty and public rights, private business and government regulation, majority preference vs. Nanny State imposition, and the freedom to go where a risk is assumed as long as that risk is a matter of free and informed choice.
The issue of smoking is in many ways the definitive case of “The rights of your fist end at the tip of my nose.”
As reported in the story by staff writer Alva James-Johnson, most of the business owners on hand expressed opposition to the proposed ordinance, which would ban smoking in all enclosed public places, including restaurants, except for those with separate smoking sections already equipped with air filtration systems before the start of the current calendar year, and certain businesses especially geared to smoking. It would ban smoking in all enclosed workplaces and outdoor areas within 25 feet of entrances, operable windows and ventilation systems, on all outdoor property adjacent to city buildings, and near outdoor areas of restaurants and bars.
The workplace ban is, with certain very specific exceptions like those listed above, a no-brainer; non-smokers should not have to deal with smoke just by virtue of having a job.
It’s also easy to understand the concern of a restaurant-bar owner who said his customers know smoking is allowed there and have the choice of staying or going elsewhere. Other business owners opposed the ban on the same grounds — that it should be a customer choice issue.
But with very few exceptions, this is not a hermetically sealed world — or city. We’re past the illusion of “smoking” and “non-smoking” sections of restaurants and airliners, separated by little if anything other than an artificial boundary.
Councilor Judy Thomas, who was at the Wednesday gathering, reminded those in attendance that nothing in the draft ordinance is “set in stone.” Issues of personal choice and public health — like “larger” health care issues — aren’t as simple as some on all sides would have us believe.
Help on the way?
On another issue of health, there might be some emergency care on the way for Georgia’s endangered rural hospitals. Georgia Health News reports that a proposed tax credit to assist hospitals in areas of the state where access to treatment is already sparse has been revived.
A House bill that would offer tax credits for donors to struggling rural hospitals died on the vine when it didn’t survive Crossover Day. But it was resurrected when it was written into another bill that did — and it was sweetened in the process.
As amended, the bill, if approved, would allow an individual tax credit of up to 90 percent of a contribution up to $5,000 a year, and a married couple credit of up to $10,000. A corporation would get a 90 percent credit of its contribution or 75 percent its income tax liability, whichever is less.
One of the bill’s sponsors called it “the court of last resort for many hospitals,” five of which have closed just in the last four years — “and many others,” GHN reports, “are cash-strapped and looking for help.”
If this legislation provides that help, it will save a lot of lives.
This story was originally published March 24, 2017 at 6:57 PM with the headline "Smoking, personal freedom and public health."