Why Not?

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Oct 19, 1882

Ought there not to be a law prohibiting the smoking of tobacco upon the streets and in public places? The recurrence of the season for travel, amusement, and life in the open air brings this forcibly to mind. Wherever we may seek fresh air and out-door life during the summer months, whether in country or city, at Coney Island or at Central Park, on the steamboat or on the car, the man with a cigar in his mouth is there before us. On the steamboat he invariably selects a breezy position on the front part of the boat, and allows the effluvia from his tobacco to float into the faces of those behind him. He always gets on the windward side of the boat; indeed, there is generally a placard warning him that there is to be "no smoking abaft the wheel," thus encouraging him to smoke where he will most annoy the greatest number, through traditional reverence for the quarter-deck. On steam or horse-car some "gent" is usually to be seen holding a lighted "fumer" between the tips of his fingers, taking a whiff occasionally, and allowing the fumes to lazily diffuse themselves about him. In the parks and at the pleasure resorts, the smoking brigade is always out in full force, apparently happy in making others unhappy. The air of a crowded depot or waiting-room is almost sure to be thick with the poisonous exhalations of consumers of cigars, cigarettes, and pipes, in spite of the dead-letter announcement, "No smoking allowed." Everywhere the pure air is turned into a "foul and pestilent congregation of vapors." Is it not time that something should be done towards the righting of this wrong?

We have "whisky crusades," "prohibition" agitation, civil service reform; why not a public smoking reform? Cannot the public be brought to the conviction that people who do not smoke have rights which smokers ought to respect, and which they will be made to respect, if they will not do it voluntarily? The average smoker, on being remonstrated with for smoking where it will annoy others, will say, "Well, I guess I've got a right to smoke; if you don't like it, you can emigrate." That is his stand-point—that he has a right to smoke. But has he a right to smoke his neighbor too? Has any man a right to poison and vitiate the common air for the sake of his own enjoyment? Have men any more right to pollute the atmosphere of Murray Hill with the smoke from poisonous weeds than they have to pollute it with the noxious odors of a sludge-acid factory? Have men any more right to puff out tobacco-smoke in a crowd than they have to throw around vitriol in a crowd? We grant that a man has a right to smoke; but he has no right to compel others to take his smoke. In his pursuit of happiness he has no right to infringe on that of another man. If a man must smoke, let him do it in private, and not where he will annoy and injure others. Public opinion ought to compel this; if it is not powerful enough to do it unaided, ought not the law to aid? If not, why not?— Christian Union.