The proposition to be examined is that there should be no smoking in public places because of the hazards of second-hand smoke, and clearly the trend is to have such smoke-free areas, to legislate to create such areas, and to frequent businesses that provide such areas. The regulation of risk has been applied to a large number of environmental hazards and other perceived hazards in the home and the workplace, with varying results. Both the government and the people have shown considerable interest in having the government serve as watchdog over certain specific hazards, and probably no perceived hazard has been addressed so assiduously or with such success as smoking. American society has changed over the last three decades from a society accepting of smoking to a society tolerant of smoking to a society antagonistic to smoking and openly intolerant of it. This process has also entailed a change in emphasis, from smoking contributes to a variety of health problems to smoking is hazardous to your health to smoking is hazardous to the health of those around you.
More and more Americans are coming to see themselves as victims in our technological society, and as such they are demanding more and more governmental effort to protect them from whatever hazards may be perceived in their environment. Smoking is such a hazard. It was once seen as a matter of personal choice that could harm the smoker but would have no real effect on others, and now it is seen as a behavior that can have health effects on anyone coming in contact with smoke, first-hand or second-hand. People have become more health-conscious and want protection, and they have asked the government to provide it. One way the government accomplishes this is through coercion of business, forcing business to do whatever is necessary to effect the protections the government believes the people want. The result in many cases is what Huber describes as an untenable situation,...