While a number of recent studies suggest that smoking bans cut down on heart attacks, critics argue that the data they rely on have been skewed or misinterpreted.
“It’s never a true reflective sample,” says Bill Hannegan, director of Keep St. Louis Free, which fights to protect the freedom and property rights of St. Louisians. “They do studies looking at communities where heart attack rates fell when bans were imposed, but we always ask, ‘Why not do a national study? Why single out a community like Bowling Green, Kentucky?' If you looked at every place, you would see that smoking bans don’t really have that effect.”
Hannegan cites a countervailing study by the National Bureau of Economic Research that found that heart attack rates were just as likely to increase after the imposition of smoking bans.
“What this study shows is that smoking bans do not reduce heart attacks in communities,” Hannegan summarizes. “What it also shows is that anti-smoking groups or tobacco-control groups have been cherry-picking cities to try and prove that smoking bans cause heart attack rates to fall.”
Keep St. Louis Free has protected the freedom and property rights of St. Louis business owners against smoking bans and other governmental usurpations for the past four years.
“We made sure that lawmakers in St. Louis were aware of all the studies,” Hannegan emphasizes. “What happened with smoking is that tobacco companies no longer contest any of these claims or fight the anti-smoking groups, so the only people fighting are private citizens, and we don’t have the resources that Big Tobacco has.”
Smoking bans, Hannegan believes, violate the rights and personal freedoms of American citizens and businessmen.
“I do believe that the business owner has the right to have a legal product on his property, if he is willing and able to take measures to reduce whatever health concerns there are to the greatest extent possible,” he affirms. “Business owners are willing to put in fans and ventilation and filtration and are acting in good faith, but public officials are not responding to this.”
Hannegan worries that the public acceptance of smoking bans could lead to other restrictions on our freedoms.
“If this was just about smoking, it wouldn’t be as great a concern, but what really concerns me is when the ends start to justify the means,” he explains. “Particularly when a group can be scapegoated using a manipulated science. The same thing being used against smokers can be used against other people later on and that should be of concern.”
