Josh,

Of course we need to have sympathy for the smokers -it is a class of addiction like any other, albeit one that costs more than many and taxes the health care system greatly. Of course we need to help them to quit using reasonable means.
I don't think this is the principal object of the smoke bans, although this might be a useful side effect. In my mind, the object of smoking bans is to protect others from the danger of second-hand smoke. In other terms, while smoking in your own house affects only your health (and that of the members of your household), smoking in public places affects a great many number of people that generally didn't ask for it.

Hear hear.  

I can usually deal with a bit of second-hand smoke, but what about those with respiratory conditions?  I just don't see why they should be endangered for the sake of what is ultimately a leisure activity and a choice.   

"I can usually deal with a bit of second-hand smoke": No you cannot. You may not feel it at the time, but unfortunately there is no minimal safe dose.

It is a well-known fact that although smokers might take 30, 40, 50+ years to get sick--if, indeed, they ever do--non-smokers who are exposed to second-hand smoke will die within minutes.

The issue isn't whether or not smoke, first-hand or second-hand, is bad. That's a no-brainer. It's whether or not free and open societies should forbid the choice to engage in a leisure activity in public. This public may decide, in large part, that they prefer non-smoking environments. Let them! Prior to smoking bans, plenty of non-smoking environments existed--I dare say far more non-smoking than smoking. Non-smokers who wished to avoid the effects of second-hand smoke had the choice to patronize any one of many non-smoking establishments, and business owners had the right to designate their business as smoking or non-smoking. The elimination of these choices--the coercive enforcement of the choice of one group over that of another is my objection.

Ultimately this is the work of zealots--in New York one asshole in particular, a wealthy Wall Street fellow who decided he'd "give back to society" by telling me and my friends that when it's 17 degrees outside and windy, we have to give up our cozy seats and step out in it several times per night. In many of places I frequent, those who wish to smoke far outnumber those who don't. And so we have to crowd outside at 2am so we can be hassled about the noise we make as we all catch our deaths not only from the cigarettes but from the elements. This kind of hand-holding is absurd. If you don't want to breathe smoke, you can go to TGI Friday's--don't come out to rock and roll clubs. For chrissake, there are even plenty of non-smoking rock clubs you can go to. Non-smokers aren't being deprived of anything or coerced into anything just because somebody allows smoking inside. The smokers are. The smoking ban advocates say, all the better for you, our health care system, etc. My only point was, that they don't understand what makes people start smoking and they don't undertsand that they're only contributing to that which makes people want to smoke.

You don't start because you want an addicition. You don't start because it tastes good. Regardless of what anybody says, the vast majority starts because of its social signification. The larger task--if they really wanted people to stop smoking--would be divorcing non-smoking from this banal and offensive culture of coercive virtue. It's also a matter of enforcing one person's view of pleasurable life over another. To one person, clean lungs and a long life are the best. To another, the words of Serge Gainsbourg (who died of lung cancer) might be more appropriate: Look at this cigarette. Of course it's eating away at my lungs. But what else could give me that same kind of psychological orgasm, one that renews itself every five seconds, every five minutes?

...Cigarettes are sublime.

As Klein writes, there is "a darkly beautiful, inevitably painful pleasure that arises from some intimation of eternity; the taste of infinity in a cigarette resides precisely in the 'bad' taste the smoker quickly learns to love. Being sublime, cigarettes, in principle, resist all arguments directed against them from the perspective of health and utility."

Scoff if you must, but there is something to it.

"The issue isn't whether or not smoke, first-hand or second-hand, is bad." Yes it is. I'm not sure you realise the extent of the problem. Smoking bans help people to quit (see the data e.g. from the Californian, Scottish and Iris smoke bans). Smoke bans reduce lung cancer from secondary smoke -that is, for non-smokers- by 24% (see the News Feature in Nature's 447, 28 June edition).
The ironical anonymous and yourself seem to take the issue quite lightly -or maybe, in your case, as a serious issue, albeit one that has nothing to do with public health. "Prior to smoking bans, plenty of non-smoking environments existed" -maybe that was your impression as a smoker. As a non-smoker, I can oppose my own experience to this. But your conclusion is that: "those who wish to smoke far outnumber those who don't" -i.e., the choice is to smoke, not smoke but accept the dangers of passive smoking, or just get the fuck out: "If you don't want to breathe smoke, you can go to TGI Friday's--don't come out to rock and roll clubs." What a nice and welcoming attitude. (I must say find it in stark contrast with your analyses on other issues.)
"they don't understand what makes people start smoking" -I don't know about "they", but it's unfortunately abundantly clear and scientifically evident that adolescents are more likely to start smoking when they are exposed to smoke -actually, even just when smoking is depicted in movies (see http://www.americanlegacy.org/523.htm). So, yes, it's what you said in a way -some people start because of smoking's "social signification". But reducing the latter is not what intellectuals and artists like yourself and Abnobel seem to be doing -hence the need for a more effective, legislative measure. Not to mention the fact that people may not start smoking because they 'want an addiction', but they most definitely continue smoking because they are addicted. Now are all means good and necessary to reduce tobacco consumption?
My first point would be that, contrary to what you seem to be thinking, smoke bans are not aimed particularly at "you and your friends". The problem of tobacco is of an incommensurable importance for public health. And while the privileged may look forward to a lethal course of chronic disease made ever better by advances in medical science, the burden of disease is as always disproportionately placed upon the poorer classes of society. I am afraid that a discourse like yours will only help inflame some people who would think that smoking bans are a further constraint on their freedom when in fact they are trying (and succeeding) to empower them and to allow them access to better health.
Not only is the burden of disease unequally distributed between the rich and the poor; our health care system in general is failing, and our medical system is under extreme pressure. We don't have enough providers, and we're already stealing as many as we can away from under-developed countries that badly need them. Tobacco contributes to some of the heaviest, longest pathologies that cost the most to treat in terms of money, time, and resources. Anything that alleviates the pressure on the health care system while reducing the burden of disease must be a good thing. If we don't start effecting changes now which we know work (such as smoking bans), disparities in health care will only be starker tomorrow.

I'm sorry if my writing here isn't too good or persuasive. This is because at the core of your discourse (and of Abnobel), there is a pseudo-aesthetic consideration coated by some misplaced pseudo-individualism (smoking cigarettes doesn't make you free -smoking cigarettes lets a chemical hijack your brain and modify your feelings, thinking and behaviours) which pains me.
You're essentially saying: smoking only affects me, the smoker. Even if you smoke in the privacy of your own home with nobody else present and are effectively only affecting your own health, I doubt this is the case. Week after week, as I encounter the families of cancer patients (not all caused by smoke, but many), I am faced with terrible grief and pain. We rarely die alone, and one of the things that studies on the consequences of tobacco smoke do not measure is the moral sufferings of a chronically sick person's family.

"The issue isn't whether or not smoke, first-hand or second-hand, is bad." Yes it is. I'm not sure you realise the extent of the problem. Smoking bans help people to quit (see the data e.g. from the Californian, Scottish and Iris smoke bans). Smoke bans reduce lung cancer from secondary smoke -that is, for non-smokers- by 24% (see the News Feature in Nature's 447, 28 June edition).
The ironical anonymous and yourself seem to take the issue quite lightly -or maybe, in your case, as a serious issue, albeit one that has nothing to do with public health. "Prior to smoking bans, plenty of non-smoking environments existed" -maybe that was your impression as a smoker. As a non-smoker, I can oppose my own experience to this. But your conclusion is that: "those who wish to smoke far outnumber those who don't" -i.e., the choice is to smoke, not smoke but accept the dangers of passive smoking, or just get the fuck out: "If you don't want to breathe smoke, you can go to TGI Friday's--don't come out to rock and roll clubs." What a nice and welcoming attitude. (I must say find it in stark contrast with your analyses on other issues.)
"they don't understand what makes people start smoking" -I don't know about "they", but it's unfortunately abundantly clear and scientifically evident that adolescents are more likely to start smoking when they are exposed to smoke -actually, even just when smoking is depicted in movies (see http://www.americanlegacy.org/523.htm). So, yes, it's what you said in a way -some people start because of smoking's "social signification". But reducing the latter is not what intellectuals and artists like yourself and Abnobel seem to be doing -hence the need for a more effective, legislative measure. Not to mention the fact that people may not start smoking because they 'want an addiction', but they most definitely continue smoking because they are addicted. Now are all means good and necessary to reduce tobacco consumption?
My first point would be that, contrary to what you seem to be thinking, smoke bans are not aimed particularly at "you and your friends". The problem of tobacco is of an incommensurable importance for public health. And while the privileged may look forward to a lethal course of chronic disease made ever better by advances in medical science, the burden of disease is as always disproportionately placed upon the poorer classes of society. I am afraid that a discourse like yours will only help inflame some people who would think that smoking bans are a further constraint on their freedom when in fact they are trying (and succeeding) to empower them and to allow them access to better health.
Not only is the burden of disease unequally distributed between the rich and the poor; our health care system in general is failing, and our medical system is under extreme pressure. We don't have enough providers, and we're already stealing as many as we can away from under-developed countries that badly need them. Tobacco contributes to some of the heaviest, longest pathologies that cost the most to treat in terms of money, time, and resources. Anything that alleviates the pressure on the health care system while reducing the burden of disease must be a good thing. If we don't start effecting changes now which we know work (such as smoking bans), disparities in health care will only be starker tomorrow.

I'm sorry if my writing here isn't too good or persuasive. This is because at the core of your discourse (and of Abnobel), there is a pseudo-aesthetic consideration coated by some misplaced pseudo-individualism (smoking cigarettes doesn't make you free -smoking cigarettes lets a chemical hijack your brain and modify your feelings, thinking and behaviours) which pains me.
You're essentially saying: smoking only affects me, the smoker. Even if you smoke in the privacy of your own home with nobody else present and are effectively only affecting your own health, I doubt this is the case. Week after week, as I encounter the families of cancer patients (not all caused by smoke, but many), I am faced with terrible grief and pain. We rarely die alone, and one of the things that studies on the consequences of tobacco smoke do not measure is the moral sufferings of a chronically sick person's family.

But your very good point about the families of smokers doesn't further your argument. Smoking bans don't extend into the private home. My comment about TGI Friday's is in perfect accordance with my other analyses--why should those who object to the lifestyle choices of one group be allowed to tread into the havens where people who practice that lifestyle do so? Loud music can damage hearing. Alcohol damages the liver, causes DUI deaths, and can induce clinical depression. Turn the music down, serve only Coca Cola, and it is TGI Friday's. This gesture is homogenizing. I'm not trying to be unwelcoming, but I'm also not interested in having every vice policed. All of these vices too can be seen to tax the public health system. But smoking bans are public restrictions against the use of one's own body according to one group's values. I'm no longer the biggest fan of Foucault, but here his notion of technologies of power and the clinic do have some resonance. My point is precisely that once one grows out of the aesthetics and pseudo-individualism, one is then confronted by a very mature issue--that of legislated control over the body.

The philosophy of illness or disease is important here too. One discovers that the discipline of medicine requires philosophy because the definition of disease is fundamentally one of values and ideas and desire. Best example of this is that certain stomach bacteria are not diseases because they are desirable. Vice is itself a cure for certain ills, even if it creates others. Even if we agree (which I think we actually do) that the justifications for vices like smoking can often be juvenile, what remains is that cultures need an economy of vice, not a legally enforced eradication of it. I do mean to say that when high school individualism fades, grown up concerns about liberal society, choices, policing of vice, forced choices, etc. come into play. If people didn't drive so damn much, the health care system would expend fewer resources mending bodies broken on highways. Health care exists precsiely because we humans do some things that aren't totally safe--and things that half the time aren't really necessary, either.

The philosophy that accompanies smoking bans can actually be applied far more strenuously. I know--I grew up around somebody who did precisely that. Injury could always be prevented (and thus the health care system goes more undamaged). Stitches, bruises, sickness, cancer, AIDS--honestly, it really can mostly be prevented if you don't climb mountains, drive cars, smoke cigarettes, kiss, have sex, push elevator buttons, talk with people face to face, do drugs, go out in the sunlight, ride motorboats, use lawnmowers, etc. Some things are more dangerous than others, sure--and some more valuable/necessary. My core point is that danger is often worth its consequence, and that the values, except in the most extreme circumstances (and I don't think smoking counts as one), shouldn't be dictated even if it does tax the health care system. Some things are more valuable than an untaxed health care system.

If I, along with 10 or 12 of people and 10 or 12 of their friends and 10 or 12 of their friends, want to assemble at a place where the owner agrees to allow smoking and serve a liver damaging, brain cell killing depressant beverage, we should be allowed. Many of these people may (and often do) take otherwise extraordinary care of their bodies as compared with the dietary and sedintary lifestyles of the vast majority of those who come under the sway of our public health system. Many of them may not (and actually many do not) smoke with any regularity. The singling out of their lifestyle for illegality in public seems to me fundamentally arbitrary.

Here's the part where I would normally have asked when we were going to start outlawing certain kinds of foods--however only a few days ago here in New York City, a ban was enacted on the use of transfats in restaurants. So it's not as if my slippery slope 'where does it end' argument doesn't have teeth.

Lastly, I'm not arguing for reducing smoking's social signification--I'm arguing more so that non-smoking divorce itself from it's association with coercive paternalism.  Nobody will ever be able to divorce smoking from its association to danger, death, etc., nor will anybody ever be able to make danger and death less sexy.  But non-smoking can be something better than what it is, which people righty feel is a bid to enforce choices and to control other people's bodies.

I miss smoking a lot. Such a pity its so evil, I am now reduced to asking people to exhale in my direction....

Josh, I cannot agree with you. Simply because part of what you say has been clearly demonstrated not to be true: take for instance the smoking ban. As I have mentioned in my previous post (with some scientific public health references, but I would be glad to provide more if needed), we know that it is useful to diminish overall tobacco consumption in a population. Thus the issue is not to know whether the ban 'extends in the privacy of the home' -it works very well as it is.
Your comparison of alcohol and tobacco with loud music, like other parts of your argument, is either grossly misinformed or entirely intellectually hypocritical -I am inclined to think the first. Loud music may damage hearing, but its effects are incomparable in extent to that of tobacco or alcohol. The latter is extremely damaging indeed, but can mostly be safely consumed in moderation, while tobacco cannot. I believe this should define our regulation of both substances -while tobacco needs to be banned from public places to avoid the consequences of secondary smoke as well as to help smokers reduce their consumption, the main point with alcohol should be education.
I also still resent your statement that you cannot get good rock'n'roll without smoke, or more generally that "regulation of vices" causes everything to become TGI Friday's. First of all, I don't think that smoking is a vice. It is an addiction -"vice" holds an unhelpful moral connotation as well as the assumption of a deliberate choice. Smoking (and more generally, drugs of abuse) takes away from you the choice. Now you don't get a choice either of being exposed to secondary smoke or not if we follow your plan and if you happen to like rock music. This line of thought would seem result in an interesting society: on the one hand, young people having fun while listening to cool music and smoking, and on the other hand a band of boring losers spending their evenings at TGI Friday's. This is all well and good, but again you seem to exclude two categories of people from your imaginary world: those who'd like to have fun as well but not smoke or get exposed to smoke (whether or not you're trying to be unwelcoming is irrelevant -you are de facto excluding them from your parties or exposing them to secondary smoke) and on the other hand the rest of the people -those that don't participate in either Firday nights at Friday's or rock concerts. To restate my earlier point, the burden of disease falls most harshly on those who cannot afford either of those two options, or advanced care for chronic diseases resulting from smoking. The smoke bans are most profitable to them, in my humble opinion.
So again, please be a tad more considerate when you list the things that you suppose "tax the public health system". Or go volunteer in a hospital or a free health clinic to have a better idea of what it is we spend our time doing -you'll notice that very few of the under-served come to clinics for hearing difficulties. Many come, however, with far more serious health problems that are compounded by the use of substances that appear as objects of leisure or of luxury to others.
"the definition of disease is fundamentally one of values and ideas and desire. Best example of this is that certain stomach bacteria are not diseases because they are desirable." -this is a prime example of what I mentioned earlier. I think this can only come to you if you are really ignorant of biology or unfamiliar with diseases. Again, I suggest you go volunteer in a free health clinic and propose to some of the patients the idea that their disease is something that is a disease only through a certain cultural viewpoint. Unfortunately, this kind of post-colonial attitude that I have encountered in many a humanities department is completely misleading and leads to further disparities in health care. As part of my volunteer activities, I have been involved in the treatment of political refugees that have been victims of torture in their countries of origin. The treatments they received here, both in terms of allopathic medicine and of Western psychotherapy does an amazing job of helping them along. I have never seen a patient complain that we were trying to impose values on him/her that weren't his/her own.
Lastly, your point with regards to the ban of trans-fats seems to me particularly revealing of the general problem with your argument. Yes, banning trans-fats is only one element of a more general and necessary public health campaign based on healthy eating education. But artificial trans-fats were disproportionately responsible for cardiovascular-related deaths (see S. Okie's Perspective article in Volume 356:2017-2021 of the New England Journal of Medicine). And what's more important, cardiovascular disease in the US is disproportionately affecting African-Americans (see http://www.americanheart.org/downloadable/heart/1168611462350AFAM07.pdf). If you're Black and poor in the US, it's not like you have your choice of gourmet foods to pick from. Places where you can eat for cheap are mostly those that use trans-fats: so again the burden of disease is on the poorer amongst us, which do not benefit from the luxury of making unhealthy choices "once in a while".

Francois:  I sympathize with your points.  Although I feel we are having a sort of basic argument about liberalism vs. collective good, don't you?  In a room where people freely assemble, if 90% wish to smoke, 6% don't care and another 4 % would rather not be around cigarette smoke, then why must the 96% cater to the 4% under fear of heavy fines from the government?   Your argument is more persuasive to me when we talk about those who don't have the luxury of making bad choices.  In such matters, I would be more inclined to agree with you.  Nonetheless I am fundamentally nervous when govt intervention dictates too much good behavior.  For me, this is a rudimentary problem between socialism and free markets: on one side, the majority isn't free to be greedy and therefore greed becomes the monopoly of those given power to arbitrate the good.  On the other, the majority is free to be greedy and you must face up to the consequences of the nastiness of human behavior BUT neither greed nor goodness is necessarily the monopoly of power.  At bottom, I believe the choice made for reasons of good conscience rather than the fear of penalty from authority is always preferable.  

As to transfats, you'd be surprised how little money I have been able to budget myself to eat in the past.  On an average tight day, I find that 50 cents for some peanuts, $1.00 for a water and $1.50 for a bag of baby carrots can go a long way.  It's usually cheaper than anything cooked in transfats, too.  A can of tuna and a can of green beans (rather than ramen noodles or 99 cent Quarter Pounders) got me through my hard college years.  While hardly ideal from a nutritional standpoint, ringing in at around $3, such a meal is still low in fat, cholesterol, and provides plenty of protein and vitamins.  The idea that poor people would starve if not for transfats I can and have disproven myself.  The grocery stores in my neighborhood in Harlem had fine produce sections, cheap ripe avocados, and fresh fruit.  A meal bought and made from these ingredients never cost more than a box of fried chicken and french fries available at Kennedy Fried Chicken (i.e. transfat Xanadu) just down the street--a popular place, granted, for the residents of the many housing projects around which I lived.  But I'm sorry if I have a hard time sympthizing--I knew what was available less than a block away for the same price, if not cheaper.  The burden of disease wasn't on the poor, it was on those who thought a leg, a wing, and some fries tasted better than canned tuna and green beans and--knowing it was less healthy--chose to get the chicken anyway.  I, too, thought the chicken would be tastier, but I opted for the other.  One might then say that this is because I was an educated kid from a middle class upbringing that I knew better--as if the lesson that deep-fried foods are unhealthy is the private knowledge of the upper classes and not a widely disseminated notion that one needs little more than a few hours with network television to suss out. 

No person should be forced to eat dangerous food because they are poor, nor should any rock and roll loving guy or gal be deprived of a great time because they don't like cigarettes.  I'm still not certain why this makes my argument intellectually hypocritical.  I'm only advocating (I thought) that individual choice not be subordinated to authority or the public good and that citiziens of a free society be entitled to use the fruits of the earth to their liking as long as it takes place on a consensual basis in company of those who also consent with the stipulation that those who do not consent may freely remove themselves from that situation.  

I personally find certain music to be noise pollution.  Granted, this falls under the hearing damage vs. smoking illnesses problem of gravitas you rightly bring up.  But when the club becomes a place I don't want to be, I go to another one.  It's the great thing about liberal non-authoritarian society.  Noise pollution, air pollution--I've even been to clubs where groups of assholes were harrassing some of my female company.  Nothing illegal mind you, but inappropriate asshole pollution.  So you leave.  Find the environment that suits you.           

As for ignorance relating to the matter of disease defintion, this is really not special to me or particularly postcolonial--its sort of a matter of classification that the medical profession faces.  Classifying disease is not an aphilosophical matter.  But we'd probably agree more than you think on what philosophically consitutes disease because I too am generally revolted at the hardline anti-clinic stance that gets a lot of its steam from postmodern/postcolonial thinkers.  

I'm admittedly not equipped to discuss the larger detriment to the public health system.  All I know is that personal choices should be limited as little as possible in liberal society and that ministries of vice and virtue, be they moral or physical, are not desirable things as far as I'm concerned.   As I say, I don't want the poor forced to eat garbage, babies forced to smoke, or fun-loving non-smokers condemned to lame bars, but I'm not ready to say that these choices should be mapped out by the law.  Moreover, to my original point, I just think that a more effective anti-smoking campaign would be more savvy with regard to taboo and seek to diminish the identification of puritanical authoritarians prohibiting smoking, as this would almost certainly diminish those who find smoking to be a symbolic gesture against such attitudes.  I think the data saying that kids smoke because they're around it can't account for attitudes passed down from parent to child, as smokers do generally tend to be (though I have no data to back this up, only experience) rebellious in one way or another.