Cheer up, Fort Wayne smokers. At least you can sneak into New Haven to have a cigarette with your meal. New Hamsphire is joining the growing list of states banning smoking in bars and restaurants border to border:
"Smokers are the only minorities I know of that society throws out into the cold in winter time," said Rep. Kenneth Weyler of Kingston. "Those zealots are out to eliminate all smoking in society."
Well, duh; you're just now figuring that out? "Smoke free" didn't give you a clue? But the prohibitionists learned from their disastrous experience with booze. If you just take away something that's part of the national cultural in one fell swoop, you'll have rampant lawbreaking and a new criminal class willing to feed the demand that hasn't gone away. So you kill it an inch at a time, with every tax increase, with each small extension of bans. The users will whine and moan, but they'll put up with it. If the prohibitionists had used that tactic with alcohol, you would be able to drink only in your own home today, and a beer would cost you about $100.
It is fascinating that people will not be able to smoke in bars, an activity that has about a billion-to-one chance of causing actual harm to an actual person, but they will still be able to drink, then drive their 3,500-pound cars on the public streets. The odds of that causing harm are . . . well, you do the math.
