Local leaders should take time deciding smoking ban issue

I have mixed emotions about the idea of a smoking ban in restaurants in the city of Corbin.
On the one hand, I am not a smoker. I wouldn’t say I enjoy breathing other people’s cigarette smoke, so in that sense I guess a ban would be nice and convenient for me.

Actually, I would call myself a reformed smoker. From about my senior year in high school until just before I graduated from the University of Kentucky, I smoked about half a pack of cigarettes a day.

When I resolved to quit, I attended free support groups and used nicotine patches to successfully stop. I fell off the wagon three times trying to quit, but was finally able to do it. The physician who led our group meetings invented one of the methods by which the patches are to be used. He said it takes our lungs 14 years to totally reverse the adverse effects of smoking. I smoked my last cigarette 13 years ago.

I have empathy for smokers in a way, I think, that many non-smokers don’t. I know how hard the habit is to kick. I understand the cravings and addiction.

If someone came into my home today and fired up a Marlboro, I would politely ask it be extinguished. If they refused, they’d leave.

In effect, I have a smoking ban in my own house.

But a restaurant is not my home. It is owned by someone else who has made a significant investment in it, and likely taken a hefty financial risk in order to carve out a living and realize the dream of being a business owner. So, to the greatest extent possible, I think restaurant owners should get to decide policy in their own establishments.

Several restaurant owners in town have told me that a good portion of their customers are smokers who would go elsewhere if they couldn’t light a cigarette while enjoying their coffee and scrambled eggs. Their restaurants would be devastated, they claim, by a ban. Maybe this is the case and maybe it isn’t. Regardless, I will assume they know their businesses and customers a little better than I do. With the economy in shambles, it may be a bad time for politicians to be trying social experiments and playing games of brinkmanship with restaurant owners who could possibly fold because of some new government regulation.

An organization composed of local citizens, and representatives from the Whitley County Health Department, is scheduled to appear before the Corbin City Commission next Monday to lobby for a ban. These are all good, well-intentioned people. They will, no doubt, trot out impressive facts and figures about how dangerous secondhand smoke is. Some may claim it is junk science. Others will swear by it as gospel. It’s validity I do not know. But it won’t be hard winning the argument that smoking isn’t a good thing. We’ve known that for decades.

I know it is bad. That’s why I quit.

But there is a part of me – and it is in all of us, I think – that values freedom and liberty more than anything else. There is no requirement that forces people to eat, or work, at restaurants, especially one that allows smoking. There are certain places I won’t frequent because I know it is packed with smokers and the smoke is too thick for me. So I stay home or go somewhere else. There are plenty of restaurants that do not allow smoking, or where the smoke isn’t really that bothersome. I think it is good to have a variety of places that accommodate everyone – smokers and non-smokers alike. I don’t need the government to pass a law to help me on this one. I can take care of myself when it comes to smoking in restaurants.

I’ve always found irony in the fact that some people will cram down meals that would send their cardiologists into fits and not worry in the least, but then fret over catching a whiff of smoke.

I know other cities around the state have done it. I know the temptation is there to follow suit. But every community is different. Is a smoking ban right for Corbin? I think our local leaders should think long and hard before coming to a decision the issue.