The price of freedom
Friday, August 13th, 2010
So as of September 1st Hungarian authorities are going to be fining smokers HUF 30,000 if they are caught smoking by an underpass or entrance to Budapest’s underground system. And if they refuse to pay the fine or are too poor to do so? Well, throw them in jail then and let the taxpayers foot the bill.
Think about this for a moment. Is a fine of that size really commensurate with the crime? What is it that is so special about the possibility of the smallest wisp of smoke in the air that justifies such a penalty? Or is the huge fine simply a reflection of the fact that most Hungarians would laugh at such regulation of their private lives twenty years after throwing off the Soviet yoke? Why would Hungary betray its hard fought freedom by accepting a new rule of law that will eventually depend upon secret police and informers and upon neighbors snitching upon neighbors, not just around underpasses, but eventually when the Hungarian Antismokers follow in the footsteps of American and EU dictates and demand bans inside of public housing and even private apartments?
Ask yourself that, and ask yourself whether the small additional benefit to the “quality of life” for someone who doesn’t smoke and doesn’t like the smell of smoke is worth the disastrous loss of freedom that smoking bans eventually always bring to pass. Think back just to recent history and you’ll see that every time any concession has been made to the antismoking extremists they immediately come back to demand more. They are never satisfied, and never will be, until they have absolute control over everything.
The US city of Boston is now moving to threaten to throw thousands of public housing residents out onto the streets if they don’t give up smoking in the privacy of their own apartments. Bans on smoking in cars if someone under 18 is a passenger are now spreading across the US and Canada like wildfire. Many North American colleges have banned smoking in student dormitories and are now starting to ban smoking for everyone — students, visitors, workers, and passers-by — on all the open-air properties legally owned by their campuses; in some instances even including bordering sidewalks!
When Hungary agreed to join the EU it was largely with an eye to the better trade position and ease of travel and security that such membership would bring. The vast majority in favor of such membership never imagined that it would bring with it pressures for the government to begin sticking its nose into private lives and choices in a way not seen since the Soviets and their tanks ruled the streets.
The arguments that extreme smoking regulations are needed on a health basis are largely false and rest mainly upon various ways of lying with words and statistics. For example, the US government claims that working or living with smokers increases the risk of lung cancer by almost 20%. That sounds pretty scary until one thinks about the fact that only four nonsmokers out of a thousand get lung cancer and that the statistic applies to forty years of constant daily exposure to levels of smoke far higher than would ever be common today in any decent bar or restaurant.
Those background facts are never mentioned in the scary propaganda put out by Antismokers. But when you add them in you realize that it all adds up to one extra lung cancer for every 40,000 years of daily exposure. That sounds a lot different than just telling people they’ve got a “20% increased risk of dying from lung cancer” if they’re exposed to smoke, doesn’t it? A simple customer spending one hour a day in a smoking bar or restaurant would get one extra lung cancer for every half million years they spend eating and drinking.
The EU may be a good thing for Hungary in many ways, but EU membership has brought some real negatives with it as well. Hungary has fought hard for its freedoms, and it should remember Benito Mussolini’s lesson from World War Two: It’s easy to steal the entire “Freedom Salami” from the butcher shop provided that you steal only one small slice at a time. A very highly respected US Supreme Court Justice had this to say about the loss of freedom many years ago, and it is just as true today:
“As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there’s a twilight where everything remains seemingly unchanged, and it is in such twilight that we must be aware of change in the air, however slight, lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”
Don’t trade your freedoms to the EU or anyone else in exchange for just a tiny bit of extra comfort. It’s not worth it.
by Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
TICAP (The International Coalition Against Prohibition)
Philadelphia, PA, USA
