To detox from tobacco or from the State?
Smoking at work, in high schools, shopping centers or even hospitals is now prohibited in France, but “nicotine addicts” can still “toast one” at the local café, at least for a few months. The ban initially concerns businesses, educational establishments, administrations, shops, shopping centers, health establishments, train stations, airports, sports halls, performance halls, etc., and all means of public transport. In eleven months, on January 1, 2008, the ban will apply to cafes, restaurants, casinos and nightclubs. Even “outdoor” playgrounds are banned from smoking. Companies can choose to set up “smoking rooms”, but the installation and operating conditions are particularly dissuasive. With the implementation on Thursday of the first stage of the total ban on smoking in public places, France is following in the footsteps of its European neighbors, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, Great Britain, and even Spain. France will then be able to boast of having one of the strictest regulations in Europe, while Brussels voted on Tuesday for a general ban on smoking in closed public spaces, without exception for restaurants, launching a debate on the necessity or not to adopt legislation at EU level. (AFP 01/02/2007)
This affair once again highlights the way in which the State has gradually invaded all spheres of public life to the point of claiming that “it is the public!” “. It is not up to the State, except in a minimum of extreme cases falling under criminal law, to prohibit any behavior whatsoever in a public space which is not its property and for which it has no responsibility. arrange as you wish.
This type of attempt, probably doomed to failure in the long term, is all the more abusive since the state prohibition – of sinister memory – targets individual behavior and the European Leviathan relays such wanderings – always under pious pretexts – instead of worrying about determining by what concrete service to citizens it could justify its existence. This type of anti-smoking provision must remain the responsibility of each establishment and, ultimately, market forces.
In the same vein, there is an old law in Belgium which prohibits being drunk in the street. The offender risks up to 12 years in prison. There is an enormity here, a manifest abuse which leads the State to want to regiment citizens, including in areas which relate to strict individual freedom.
The State must concentrate on its natural attributions which are the repression of crimes, external defense and democratized justice, and stop practicing incessant, sterile and costly intervention in the field of individual and public freedoms.
