Optimist Defined

Back in the summer of 1966 when I was driving an F-105 in the skies over North Vietnam and we were losing one or two airplanes a day, the statistic was that an F-105 pilot flying a hundred mission combat tour was shot down once every sixty-five missions. Even a fighter pilot can handle that level of math. The sick joke was that the definition of an optimist was a Thunderchief pilot who was afraid he was going to die of lung cancer.

The crew chiefs often customized their airplane by installing an ashtray in the right-hand console where a small chunk of unused landscape was available. They would commandeer one of those disgusting cast aluminum canisters that were made to fit into the inkwell of an old-fashioned side-arm school desk/chair then cut a round hole in the blank panel to slide it into place. Coming off the target it wasn’t uncommon to see your flight lead flip off the side of his oxygen mask and light up an unfiltered Camel. Think about it. You’re in a small metal projectile, five miles above the earth with about five tons of jet fuel still strapped to your butt and a mask dumping 100% oxygen into your face and you’re lighting up a ciggie to calm your shattered nerves. Lung cancer was pretty low on the probability list of things that would kill you.

But, that was then and this is now:

We Know What's Best For You

Symptomatic of what we have become, don’t you think? We’ve known now for thirty or forty years that cigarette smoking will kill you. The laundry list of fatal and debilitating maladies is long and frightening. We know with certainty that cigarettes are addictive. Most folks that start will find it an excruciating experience to quit. We can’t miss the point that cigarettes have become outrageously expensive. Find a coin-operated cigarette machine in the back of your local warm-beer honky-tonk and it will set you back six bucks to get a pack of coffin nails. So, let me see how that works out. Six bucks a pack for a two pack a day habit is $12 every day, seven days a week and thirty days a month. That’s $360 dollars a month if you are math impaired and $4320 per year. Not chump change, although you could conclude there is a chump involved.

Want life or health insurance? Well, if you confess to being a smoker it will cost you more. Want a job? Your employer might discuss your health choices with you and suggest that they would prefer you didn’t smoke. It is virtually assured that your place of employment will have very limited smoking areas and won’t take kindly to several interludes during the work day to feed your habit by frequenting them. If you live in a cold climate you will find yourself standing out in the blowing snow of the parking lot or the loading dock sucking on your butt to keep your jones at bay. And, people will tell you that you stink…because you do. Why would anyone voluntarily buy into this?

So, what’s with Dallas city council and a smoking ban? The question should be why? It is a governmental solution to something that should be a free market decision.

Government can determine what is done in government buildings. Government can make a product illegal. It should be noted that the Volstead Act proved that even a Constitutional amendment can’t change behavior, but they can try. Government should not, however, be in the business of defining what is and what is not permissible between consenting adults in a private business.

The choice is up to the business owner and the client. People like to drink in bars and when they drink some like to smoke. People like restaurants with bars in them. They socialize before and after dining, and smoke in the process. Some people don’t like bars. Some don’t like restaurants. Some don’t like smoke. Choices can be made.

If you want to be a successful bar/restaurant owner, you will get to make a choice in a free society. You can evaluate the marketplace and decide whether you will get more customers in an establishment which allows smoking or in one which prohibits it. Or you can fit your business with an air management system that handles smoking without it impinging on the non-smoker’s sensibilities. It is your unconstrained free choice.

If more folks want to be smoke free and you have chosen smoking, your business will languish. If people want to kill themselves with a cigarette while deconstructing their liver with alcohol, then your smoking bar will be a hit. It is the market’s choice.

But, keep government out of it. Fix potholes. Put our fires. Cut the grass in the parks. Keep the thugs from harassing the nice people. But leave smoking out of it.