Mecklenburg County wants to harm bars and restaurants that ban smoking on their premises by removing their competitive edge. That is, Mecklenburg Co. commissioners want to ban smoking from all bars and restaurants. You know, because other proprieters secretly want to kill off all their customers, and county commissioner types are such well-known savants that they know what’s best for people’s interests, even more so than the people themselves, especially if those people run businesses and must be especially sensitive to and accomodating of other people’s wants.
The Tyranny of the Proper wants to extend its hold on Charlotte. Supposedly it’s because of the so-deadly effects of secondhand smoke that commissioners must spring into action and not let people choose. Egad! Tarry and they may have already unwittingly committed suicide! Let me defer to Peggy Noonan to speak on this matter, when she writes of “THEM: The one group for whom liberals have no tolerance at all“:
“Second hand smoke kills.” But ? how to put it? ? we all know that’s just politically correct propaganda invented by the prohibitionists, don’t we? If you spend 24 hours a day in a 4-by-4-foot room with a chain smoker you’ll feel it, and you’ll be harmed by it. But are you damaged by the guy down the hall who smokes in the office at work? No, you’re not, and you know it. You just don’t like it. Your nostrils are dainty little organs, and your nostrils trump his rights.
