TomPhil

Clearly, if I was presented with an entirely free choice as to whether to enter such establishments, I would not care less what they allowed - I would just not enter if I disagreed with their rules, as you suggested. I completely agree with you that if I had a totally free choice, then there would be little justification for the smoking ban.

At the other end of the scale, if I had a gun pointed at my head (literally) and I was ordered to enter such an establishment, then I think you would agree that I would be unable to consider whether I disagreed with the rules, and therefore, because I was able to exercise no choice whatsoever, your analysis of the free market fails. It would therefore be perfectly justifiable to impose restrictions on the establishment, as I would have no choice as to whether to enter or not.

Thus far, I hope we can agree. If I have a completely free choice as to whether to enter an establishment, then that establishment should have a completely free choice as to its rules. On the other hand, if I have absolutely no choice whatsoever, then it is necessary to regulate the rules of the establishment.

However, unlike you, I can see the shades of grey. It's not a black and white issue. No, I don't have a gun pointed at my head. But neither do I have an entirely free choice. If I am working for a company, and all the other people working there go to a smoky pub after work, my freedom of choice is restricted. There is a great deal of pressure on my to attend the pub. Not doing so may mean social exclusion and may harm my job prospects. That's a pretty serious restriction on my freedom of choice. Or if, to give a previous example, I am an elderly (non-smoking) person in a village where the only place to socialise is a smoking establishment, then I know that unless I go there, I will be socially excluded, a significant hardship. My freedom of choice is significantly impaired.

Thus the reality lies somewhere between your "you have a completely free choice: if you don't like it don't go in" analysis and the "gun to your head" analysis I outlined earlier. My choice is free only to a limited extent. This means that you cannot run the argument that as my choice is free, the establishment owner's choice should be free. Presumably, by the same token, as my choice is restricted, so can that of the owner of the establishment. It lies somewhere along the line between complete freedom and absolutely no freedom.

Now, I completely agree with you that we should not place unnecessary regulation on people. Perhaps this agreement on opposition to unnecessary regulation is one of the reasons that we are both posting on an anti-EU forum. But my above discussion has highlighted that I, and the tens of millions of non-smokers like me, do not have a free choice. We are restricted, "regulated", if you like, by the circumstances. I agree that I should bear much of this restriction, if it is my circumstances that have imposed it on me, even if not through my fault. It is not my place to tell the establishment owner that I don't like the food he serves or the music he plays. But I think that it is justifiable to say that the small limitation of a ban on smoking - setting fire to a tube of carcinogenic chemicals of which there is no safe level and emitting them into the air for other people to inhale - should be imposed. This is because, as highlighted numerous times in this thread, my choice is not free. This is where your analysis breaks down.

There is a sliding scale between the two situations outlined above. If my choice is completely free, then so should be that of the establishment owner. If my choice is completely unfree, then it is completely justifiable to say that so should be that of the establishment owner. But where my choice is partially free (or partially unfree, depending on how you look at it), then that is somewhere along the line, perhaps closer to one end, perhaps closer to the other. On the other side of the line, the establishment owner should be placed. So if my choice is restricted, as it may well be by social, work pressures, etc., then this is a justification for imposing some restrictions - the minimum necessary to protect my own freedoms - on the establishment owner. I believe that banning dangerous and extremely unpleasant activities such as smoking (f you won't agree that it increases my risk of dying, as I maintain it does, then at least agree that it may give me a headache, or set off people's asthma) is a proportionate response to make sure that the maximum freedom is available to everyone.

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