The CJ reports this morning that the smoking ban exemption for Churchill Downs was struck down by a judge. As I mentioned when the Metro Government first gave the exemption to the track, the exemption was totally arbitrary, and now a judge agrees. Small business owners were put at a competitive disadvantage with the big gambling establishment in town, and Churchill Downs, which is pushing for expanded gambling, undoubtedly wanted to retain a smoking environment for all those slot players it wanted to attract if Beshear succeeds in changing the Kentucky Constitution.
It is doubtful the ban would have passed without the exemption, of course, and, in fact, this is what opponents of the smoking ban are going to argue. They want the law reconsidered for that reason.
In one sense it's hard to feel sorry for Churchill Downs, which dropped opposition to the ban because it got the exemption. On the other hand, smoking bans are just bad law.
The rate of smoking has been reduced drastically over the last several decades because people have decided of their own accord not to smoke cigarettes. That's how it should work. And non-smoking areas are the rule in most eateries.
Smoking bans are merely superfluous, but the impulse behind them is dangerous. By the same reasoning that is employed in the enactment of smoking bans, we will soon have governments banning trans fats, and then, potentially, fast food in general. Is fast food good for you? Not particularly, but do we really need Big Brother telling us we can't eat those french fries?
Just like smoking, the use of trans fats is already being reduced--by the free market. But watch for governing bodies like the Metro Council, grown confident in its power over individual decisions, to set its sites on that too.
My theory has always been that health fanaticism is a religion for people who have lost their other one. And all the impulses which the left criticizes among those whose enthusiasm is not for things of this world pale in comparison to those that animate the lovers of this one
In other words, if you think religious people can be fanatic, just keep your eyes on the health Nazis. You ain't seen nothin' yet.
