Ashtrays on Airplanes - The Problem with Indiana Bill 503

While discussing air travel with a couple family members, the conversation quickly turned to ashtrays on airplanes. If a plane features ashtrays it isn't a plane you want to fly on. More than likely it's unacceptably old. Come to think of it, it has been a while since an ashtray in a public place was acceptable. When my mother was a teenager her high school had smoking lounges-for the students! Now thanks to zero-tolerance policies, smoking in the boy's room has some serious consequences. As recently as my teenage years, entering a restaurant brought with it two predictable questions: "How many?" and "Smoking or non-smoking?" As many restaurants, and even some cities, are enacting smoking bans, the predictable restaurant-questioning is reduced to simply party size.

A sufferer of asthma, the ubiquitous smoking section posed an ever-present problem for me. Though restaurant owners believed a short, fiberglass wall between smoking and non-smoking booths solved this problem, the predicament got to be so bad that my family and I started avoiding restaurants with smoking sections. I don't believe we were the only ones. For this reason, when restaurants eliminated their smoking sections, I believed they were showing how much they valued their customers, and that's just good business.

However Indiana Senate Bill 503 is a different matter. The Bill, which mainly focuses on providing health insurance for the working poor, was passed by both chambers, but is hung up in a joint session of congress over how to fund the Bill. Though Governor Daniel's plan to increase health insurance is admirable, the bill has one less-than-satisfactory contingent, a smoking ban. That I would disapprove of such a thing might seem surprising, since I just sung the praises of smoke-free areas, but a key difference exists. In the above cases the business or locality decided that a smoking ban was in their best interest. They put into practice an important part of what makes this country so great, the ability for one to make one's own decisions based on one's own self interest. In a recent political survey, however, I was asked whether or not I would support a government ban on trans fats. What's next? A ban on candy because it rots the teeth? A ban on bebe guns because "you'll shoot your eye out?" Though a smoking ban might seem harmless, we have to stop and think about the implications. What happens when the government starts deciding what's good for us? I don't like to think about the answer. But we can keep the ashtrays off the airplanes.