Quite well put.
By Tom Robotham
Tuesday, Aug. 14, 2007
Signs, signs, everywhere there’s signs
Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind
Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign
- Arthur Thomas
In his book The New Temperance, published in 1997, author David Wagner observed that "the last decades of the 20th century may well be remembered as a time when personal behavior and character flaws dominated the American mind." News reports on the deaths of Jerry Garcia and Mickey Mantle, he noted, were "exercises in moral diagnosis," while a steady stream of public service announcements urged us to "just say no to drugs, cigarette smoking, fatty foods," and other "vices."
I see no indication that this new temperance movement has abated. You can see examples of it, locally, in Virginia Beach’s no-cursing signs and in Norfolk’s revived effort to ban smoking citywide in bars and restaurants.
When I brought this up with a friend last week, he immediately challenged me, arguing that the smoking ban is different. It’s a public health issue, pure and simple, he said.
I can see his point. One indication that banning smoking in bars and restaurants is not primarily an expression of the moralistic impulse of our own Puritan heritage is that the same ban has already taken hold in Ireland, among other places. The official rationale for this ban is that non-smokers—especially bartenders, waitstaff and musicians, who can’t easily pick up and go to another bar—need to be protected from secondhand smoke.
And yet, as I observe the growing disdain toward smokers, I can’t help thinking about a book I read in graduate school called Wayward Puritans: A Study in the Sociology of Deviance, by Kai T. Erikson. The main argument of the book is that societies need to identify certain behaviors as unacceptable, not simply because those behaviors are intrinsically bad but because doing so makes the mainstream society more cohesive and make us feel better about ourselves. If we somehow managed to wipe out all behavior that is currently considered dangerous, whether physically or to our moral fiber, Erikson suggests, we would have to create a whole new set of unacceptable activities.
It’s important to bear this in mind as we talk about a citywide smoking ban in bars and restaurants, not only because it’s a good idea to take all motives into account when considering public policies and private actions alike, but because laws have long-term consequences beyond their immediate impact.
The long-term consequences of the smoking ban, supporters argue, will be a reduction in lung disease and the creation of more pleasant social environments. Indeed, my friend, who is a musician, said he objects to playing in smoky bars not only because of the potential threat to his health but because such places are simply obnoxious. "When I go home," he told me, "I have to shower before going to bed because I can’t sleep with the smell, and I have to air out my guitar cases outdoors."
Fair enough. But another potential long-term consequence of any law is that it may someday be used as a precedent for more restrictions. When we’re talking about restrictions on personal behavior, such precedent setting can be alarming. Is it not possible, for example, that we might see a day when cigarette and cigar smoking would be outlawed in private homes where children are present, on the grounds that smoking around kids constitutes child abuse?
That would never happen, my friend argued.
But I’m not so sure. I reminded him that in the early 1960s—after the dangers of smoking had already been clearly identified and warning labels on packs had become mandatory—anyone would have been laughed out of the room if they worried aloud that smoking might someday be banned in pubs—in places like Dublin, no less. You’re just being paranoid, would have been the response.
My friend argued that if he had his way, tobacco would be outlawed in the same way that other recreational drugs are. But if you ask me, we have too many laws regulating personal behavior already. We should have learned our lesson from Prohibition, but we didn’t. Raising the drinking age to 21 did nothing to minimize the problem of binge drinking among teenagers and college students. If anything, it aggravated the problem, by heightening its appeal as a forbidden activity and by forcing teens to learn to drink in parked cars, wooded areas, alleys and basements when the parents are away.
I’m also ambivalent about helmet and seatbelt laws. I’ve been routinely buckling my seatbelt ever since I learned to drive, not because it was the law (it wasn’t, back then) but simply because someone told me it was a good idea. It was common sense. But if I choose not to do so, shouldn’t that be my prerogative?
Ditto, when it comes to riding a motorcycle without a helmet. And certainly a bicycle. Which brings me back full circle to the moralistic impulse associated with the regulation of personal behavior, whether that regulation comes through laws or just social pressure. When I ride my bike to work, I rarely wear a helmet. There’s risk, I know. But having grown up in an era when bicycle helmets didn’t even exist, I view the risk as minimal.
That this should be my personal decision seems to have been lost on many people. On at least a dozen occasions, I’ve been lectured by acquaintances about the danger of not wearing a bicycle helmet.
The trouble with their argument is not that they are wrong, per se. It’s that all of these efforts aimed at public health and safety are somewhat arbitrary. Indeed, if we were really concerned about minimizing deaths and injuries in car accidents, for example, we wouldn’t focus on seatbelt laws. We’d tear down highways and build massive new rail networks for passengers and freight.
Likewise, if we’re talking about child safety, why stop at helmets for bicyclists and skateboards? Why not start a campaign to encourage surfers, for example, to wear helmets, neck braces and other protective gear?
I know, I know: This is probably coming off like a hysterical, paranoid rant. But again, if you look at these questions in the context of history, they’re not that far-fetched. The fact that a cigarette ban in Irish pubs would have sounded utterly absurd if floated in conversation in 1965 underscores my point. So does the fact that a child clad in all the latest safety gear would look like some diminutive space alien if he somehow managed to travel back in time to the 1960s or ‘70s. Undoubtedly, he would be safer than my friends and I if he joined us for a spin around the neighborhood. But where’s the tradeoff? Where’s the sense of childhood freedom when you’re layered with helmets and knee pads and all manner of other things?
Where, for that matter, does our adult sense of freedom go when we’re denied a succession of things that were once considered small pleasures but are now considered unacceptable vices? I don’t smoke cigarettes, as a rule. I enjoy a couple of cigars a week. But this is not about my habits. It’s about my ability, and yours, to decide that certain pleasures are worth the risks associated with them. The proposed smoking ban won’t take that right away. But it seems to me that if this trend toward regulation continues, we may one day live in a society that is exceedingly safe and healthy but is so joyless it’ll make the Puritans look like the case of Animal House by comparison. •
