I used to be able to eat Twinkies everywhere. Standing in the bus station, at a restaurant, at a bar, wherever, I could just peel open that wrapper and enjoy my perpetually (and eerily) moist delight. But now the anti-Twinkie agenda is just too powerful. I can barely open up a Twinkie outside without getting dirty looks from people.
And indoors, forget about it. No way, not a chance. It's like I'm a second-class citizen. Last I checked, it was legal and easy to walk into a store and buy a Twinkie, so why should it be so much more difficult to enjoy one? I'm being stripped of my rights.
Okay, I admit it: I'm not really talking about Twinkies. I'm really talking about smoking. The parallel isn't quite dead on, but it's there. Sure, smoking can be more obnoxious and bothersome to others. There aren't really second-hand Twinkie consequences (unless I were to smash the Twinkie between my two open hands, spraying the delicious cream filling on an unsuspecting bystander, the mere idea of which makes me giggle uncontrollably).
But the parallel is this: Both are unhealthy, extraneous and enjoyed by many. And Twinkies likely contain plenty of Public Enemy No. 2 - trans fats. We've only just begun to see the crackdown on those.
I don't smoke. But there's always the chance that I'll decide I want to partake in that completely legal substance, grown within the borders of our own 50 states since this country's founding (maybe not any of the good states, but that's not important).
Whether or not that instance ever comes, I'd like to know that the government isn't going to step in and legislate my choices. There has been a disturbing trend of "mommy" government of late, making laws to keep us healthy because we're apparently not qualified to do it ourselves.
It's illegal to light up in any restaurant, bar or club in New York City, and a similar bill has been proposed in Baltimore. The argument for the ban is that no amount of second-hand smoke is safe, and thus no employee should be required to be exposed to it.
But let's say I want to open up a restaurant. Let's call it Zachy G's Sweet Loo-siana House of Crawdaddies and Catfish. I want my business to succeed, so I'm going to do whatever I think is best for it.
That may include allowing smoking, maybe in its own section, maybe in the whole restaurant. I should be able to make that choice, just like it is a potential customer's choice whether he wants to patronize a restaurant that allows smoking. It is likewise a potential employee's choice whether she wants to apply to such a place.
We weigh all sorts of factors when we're applying for jobs -- proximity, pay, hours, quantity of windows, availability of soda machines, access to Super V-Force MurderBots. Why shouldn't exposure to smoke be one of those factors? The choice should be up me.
I'll go one further. Let's go with the smoking ban premise. So I agree, no employee should ever be exposed to evil, demon smoke. I suppose, then, that no one should be exposed to potentially harmful substances in the workplace. I guess coal mining should be outright illegal. I bet farming is no good either. Pesticides, you know? How about nuclear power plants? Infectious disease research? Traffic cop at a busy intersection? Poison effectiveness tester?
There are plenty of jobs where exposure to harmful stuff is just part of the gig. But we've chosen smoking as the evil one because public opinion is against it right now. There are reasons: It smells, it's not good for us, it doesn't have any practical purpose, it makes our fingers yellow and some people make fish mouths when they're about to take a drag off a cigarette.
But when we give lawmakers carte blanche to legislate against things that annoy us, we're opening a can of worms more harmful than any pack of cigarettes.
There's now a trans fat ban in all New York City restaurants. I don't consider that as egregious as a smoking ban, since no one ever has access to an ingredients list when we're eating at a restaurant so we can't make an informed decision about what we're eating, but I can see the slope getting slipperier.
The smoking ban, though, is completely unfounded. We all know that cigarettes are bad for us, so we can make the choice whether to expose ourselves to them.
And guess what? We do a lot of things that are bad for us. We enjoy them. And we also enjoy the freedom of being able to make the choice whether to do them. Next time I go out to eat in New York or Baltimore or anywhere, I want to be able to light up a cigarette. I like a good smoke after my Twinkie.
