One of the best things about Madison is our vibrant bar scene. Whether we're talking about the Pub, the Blue Velvet, the Plaza or the Paradise Lounge, there are plenty of places to go and have a fun time hanging out with your friends. Bars are a great place within our society. They are places where people of all races, religions and political persuasions can sit down together and get hammered. They are places where we can cast off our pressures in life for a moment through inebriation, gluttony and all-around sinning. Or at least, we used to be able to.
Tuesday night, the Madison City Council overwhelmingly passed an ordinance to ban smoking in all bars in the city. Smoking, which is a legal, regulated activity that is bad for us, has now been forbidden in the place where we go to do the legal, regulated activities that are bad for us. Proponents argue that this will cut the dangers of second-hand smoke, and that smokers present a danger to the health of those around them. Opponents based their objections mainly on a negative impact to businesses that might lose customers.
Neither side is really on the mark. In New York City, which passed a similar smoking ban, there has been no great loss of business. If anything, sales tax revenues have actually increased in the city, so there is no data to say that a smoking ban would harm the business community.
On the other hand, the idea of protecting us from second-hand smoke is predicated on the notion that we are all helplessly exposed to smoke, rather than choosing to go to bars or accept jobs there knowing the dominant culture. There is still plenty of second-hand smoke just from hanging out with one's friends and family. If smoking is banished from the bars it will occur outside where it could be an annoyance for people just walking by, who did not specifically set out to go to a place where it would be happening. Cigarette smoke and butts will cease to be a product of the inside of bars but will instead be all over the sidewalks. So the proponent case is not exactly perfect, either.
With both the pro and anti positions in doubt, is there a principle at stake? A bar is where we go to drink alcohol, eat unhealthy food, smoke cigarettes and hopefully pick someone up. Suddenly the city has decided that one of these unhealthy behaviors is bad enough to warrant their intervention. I'm not suggesting for a minute that they are about to interfere with our rights to the other three, but that kind of government reach deserves serious consideration.
Up until now, students and bar-owners in Madison have had a great relationship. We go to their establishments to party. We can spill our drinks, we can drop glasses, we can make the place smell like an ashtray, and they will clean it all up. That's what a bar is there for. In a city obsessed with health food and political correctness, a bar is where we can let go. By going to bars we consent to the loudness, the smoke, the beauty of it all. Unfortunately, the Council does not believe we are mature enough to make that informed choice. As far as they're concerned, our being able to choose to do unhealthy things together is simply too much liberty.
One of the few heroes in City Hall has to be Ald. Mike Verveer, District 4. He attempted to pass a sensible substitute amendment that would allow smoking after 10 p.m., when a place ceases to be a restaurant and takes on the culture of a bar. Unfortunately, this was voted down. He was one of only five alders to vote against the ban. Besides Verveer, all of the other alders from student areas, like Alds. Austin King, District 8 or Brenda Konkel, District 2, sold us out, voting to do away with our personal freedoms. Supposedly pro-business alders like Alds. Zach Brandon, District 7, or Santiago Rosas, District 17, also voted for the ban, telling business owners what kind of environment they can maintain for their customers in their own establishments.
The actions by city government in Madison were simply illiberal in the classical sense of the word. They decided that they know better than the average Madisonian what decisions should be made for ourselves in regard to where we work, where we go out, and how we decide to live. They have become so puritanical that they have decided to excise a popular indulgence from our great places of indulgence. In the name of liberalism we have sacrificed liberty. We have lost something special in Madison.
