Lesley Stedman Weidenbeners’ article in the Courier Press noted testimony on behalf of the Argosy Casino in opposition to the proposed statewide smoking ban. They were among the businesses who said they would be hurt by a smoking ban. Possibly not the most sympathetic of causes. And, they weaken the property rights argument of the other businesses. If other businesses were contesting a gambling ban, as opposed to a smoking ban, in their own establishments, you’d figure Argosy, beneficiary of a partial monopoly on gambling, would be in favor of government restrictions on what takes place on other people’s property. And, of course, some legislators probably figure that reducing gambling through a smoking ban is a little extra added bonus.
It causes a drop in business,” said Richard Klemp, vice president of government relations for Penn National Gaming, which owns Argosy Casino in Lawrenceburg. He estimated that 50 percent of the riverboat’s customers are smokers.
50%? That’s remarkable. What is the rate of smoking among the population as a whole? Would more non-smokers be attracted to the casinos if there was a smoking ban? Is there some underlying characteristic that makes people prone to smoking also prone to gambling?
On the other side of the equation:
Bruce Hetrick of Indianapolis told lawmakers that he lost his 49-year-old wife to cancer that doctors said was caused by secondhand smoke she inhaled in part while working in a newsroom where editors smoked. Hetrick said he promised her he’d continue the fight for a smoking ban.
“You don’t kill businesses by making them smoke-free,” Hetrick said. “You kill workers by making them inhale smoke.”
Even as a smoker I am not defending but the issue of second hand smoke and the deaths caused by it are all subject to speculation. Where is the scientific data that is the basis for all the statements that second hand smoke caused this or that. For any doctor to definitely say “caused by second hand smoke” ignores a) no way they could know for sure, b) ignores any potential genetic or other medical factors for that individual, and c) ignores all other environmental factors that could cause either wide spread or individual reaction.
I testified in the hearing, and listened to the full testimony of both sides. The figure I heard consistently cited is that 24% of Hoosiers smoke.
The thing about hurting casino business is that it is apparently Indiana’s #4 source of tax dollars. The casino representatives said that they pay over a billion dollars a year in taxes to Indiana. They said they expect to lose 15% of their business is this passes, so Indiana can expect to correspondingly lose $150 million a year.
So, I figure there is some sympathy in the Statehouse, for the same reasons the casino interests appear unsympathetic to you.
Your thought highlights what I think is a weakness generally applicable to libertarian approaches to pollution. Harm from pollutants tends to be of the death by a thousand cuts variety. For any one of them it is tough to prove any particular damage, and the harmful consequences tend to be remote in time from the harmful act(s).
Libertarian philosophy where the government stands back and individual citizens go to court to resolve damage caused by one to another works well enough when Citizen A breaks your fence or punches you in the nose. But not so well in the case of pollutants which seem to call for a more regulatory, preventive framework.
Relying on casinos for tax revenue always seemed problematic to me. Not because I have any beef with casinos, but because the mathematical laws that say you are almost certainly going to lose money in a casino make me think we’re just putting lipstick on taxes to make them look better. Seems odd to me that a person can go drop $100 in a casino but that extra $5 in taxes, if assessed directly, is going to kill them.
Theoretically speaking, one is at least supposed to derive some entertainment value from gambling. Now maybe, if the politicians would give us some real entertainment value for our tax monies, the problems people have with paying said taxes would diminish?
Would the smoking ban also reduce drinking? I thought I saw some testimony from bar owners where there had been a local ban that their businesses were hurt, had to fire employees, etc. As with gambling…is that necessarily all bad? Especially since drinking in bars as opposed to drinking at home is probably more of a cause of drunk driving? I’m rambling now…and anyway my libertarian streak is not crazy about this. Or maybe its my streak of occasionally wanting to enjoy a cigarette myself when at a bar while not smoking more often…
My not necessarily logical inclination would be to permit smoking at least in places where other “vices” are being undertaken: bars, casinos, strip clubs.
I’ve argued against smoking bans until I’m blue in the face using fact based, articulate, and common sense arguments which will NEVER change anyones mind. Our Government, in cooperation with some very powerful lobbying groups, long ago convinced the masses (with hype & fuzzy science) that, even though life expectancy is longer than ever, and cancer deaths have gone down, it is still imperative that everyone stop smoking. (never mind the gazillions in lost tax revenue if we all quit, they haven’t thought that far ahead)
It is now simply an accepted fact that the government is in fact established to protect the citizenry from ALL THINGS HARMFUL, be it smoke, trans-fats, sugar, salt, butter, etc.
I sure hope you all are prepared to get what you wished for, because you may not like where it leads. Ever seen or heard of any Government program/law that was EVER scaled back or repealed?
They don’t scale back, they expand.
By the way, can anyway yet produce a death certificate that shows “cause of death was due to second hand smoke from cigarettes, not from the exhaust of numerous buses Joe stood next to everyday for hours”.
What’s the ultimate goal here, to enable everyone to live forever?
Ah Tim, this takes me back to a high school debate where my opponents (correctly, it seems) won the judge over via a unrelated emotional argument not tied to reason or the subject at hand.
I think that they became political flacks not long afterwards. rofl
Well, if second hand smoke isn’t actually harming anyone, what is the “real” reason so many people are working so hard to get rid of it? The way you put it, it seems pretty arbitrary. Why not spend this effort to get rid of, I don’t know, purple?
In a word Doug “perception”.
Doug- You have perhaps projected the expected libertarian dogma onto me. I was only reporting what the casino interests said, and have not been saying that pollution or secondhand smoke are issues that are to be devoid of regulation.
On pollution, I favor Pigovian taxes. It’s obvious that pollution causes harm on those who cannot do anything about it. The smokestack is built upwind of your property, and drops the filth on you. Pigovian taxes are the best way to address it, providing a funding source for the damaged, while providing incentive for the polluter to change their ways.
On secondhand smoke, I favor ordinances that require businesses to post their smoking policy, or otherwise fully inform, their would-be patrons and employees. Then, those who would enter the building can make informed choices. The difference there is that everybody who enters the smoky building by choice- their own volition. You cannot tell me that someone who’s skill set can be summed up in the phrase, “do you want fries with that?” cannot transfer the same skill set to a voluntarily non-smoking venue where the same skill set is required. That was another white elephant in the room.
In the end, it would please me to see revenues to the state decrease. If it is by way of hurting casino business, then I regret the means, but applaud the end.
My opinion on a large measure of the anti-smoking support is that many people just don’t want to eat in a smoky restaurant, AND, they don’t want to have to think about it. They want to simply show up at any restaurant, and have it be smoke free. I think that’s the unspoken root at a lot of our laws: People don’t want to have to do too much thinking or research. Indeed, the restauarant chains that favor the ban do so for one reason- uniformity. They don’t want to have to think too much, either.
A smaller percentage, the ones that brought the emotional testimony to bear yesterday, are the ones who attributed deaths of loved ones, or personal injury, as a result of their contact with secondhand smoke. There again, there is a remedy, and as a lawyer, one you should be aware of.
For my money, though, the erosion of liberty one bill at a time is the aforementioned death by a thousand paper cuts.
Lastly, I agree with you about especially providing exception for those house of ‘vices’. Nobody enters them expecting a health club.
Pigouvian.
I wasn’t particularly trying to project the libertarian dogma onto you, Mike. In my head, I tend to start from libertarian dogma, I think, even though I find it wanting more and more as I progress into my dotage.
Pigovian tax (Wikipedia allows for both spellings apparently.) I had not heard this term before. Basically, where a market activity involves an externality, the tax helps to internalize the externality by imposing a tax equal to the cost of the externality. Calculating the actual cost is, of course, tricky business.
Doug, What Mike said.