Well, judging by how willingly smokers submit to all these new rules, and especially to the new _social_ rules that accompany them, I suspect that the war on nicotine is being won. Look at how the number of smokers have been reduced over the last decades.

Motorcycle helmet laws, or even seat belt laws for automobiles, illustrates that distinction clearly, without the distracting issue of second hand smoke. Riding a motorcycle without a helmet is risky behavior for the rider but poses no danger at all to bystanders. My government still wants to rid me of my bad riding habits though. They tell me it’s for my own good.

As I wrote above, that’s a dishonest way of putting it. You’re pretending that everything we have done to fight smoking has been to protect the health of non-smokers. That is not true. _Some_, or even _many_ were, and in principle I’m fine with that. But not the rest.

In the case of trains, I agree that having entire compartments just for smokers was a bad solution. (I mentioned it because it shows how far our attitudes have changed in a short time.) But they could have had rooms where you could go to have a smoke. Or, at least, it should be up to train and air companies to offer that service if they want to.

What happened is this (at least in Norway):

Train cars/compartments were divided into smoking and non-smoking. Air plane cabins were split: Smokers in the back, non-smokers in the front.

What happened was this: After some time even the smokers experienced how nice it is to breathe in a non-smoker environment. So, they booked/took a seat in the non-smoking part – and when they felt for smoking, they went to the smoking allowed area.

This meant that if you were late booking, you would be seated in the smoking area – smoking or not. And the smoking allowed area would be extremely “smoky”.

Those thinking that somehow the way smokers was treated was unfair, should really have a look back at how smokers behaved.

The point is, smokers did claim the right to harass non-smokers. They don’t have that right any more.

Consider second-hand smoke. If we just wanted to protect non-smokers, we could have said to restaurants and pubs: You have to find some way to make sure that nobody who visits or works at your place is subjected to a level of second-hand smoke that is higher than safe level X. We don’t care how. You may have to ban smoking entirely, but that’s up to you. Just make sure non-smoking guests and employees aren’t affected.

But we didn’t. We said: Nobody can smoke at all, no matter what.

Is there a difference? Not necessarily. It could be that there really is no way to other way to protect people from second-hand smoke. But maybe there is, or maybe someone will find a way tomorrow.

The reason we didn’t do that is because the second-hand smoke laws were only _partly_ about protecting non-smokers. They were also about harassing smokers. I don’t think that’s okay. At least we have to acknowledge that there’s a huge moral difference between protecting bystanders and harassing people who choose an less healthy lifestyle.

And of course smoking is also an addiction, but there’s a large amount of personal choice involved. I don’t accept _at all_ that just because something is an addiction, and is somewhat unhealthy for you, then the state may limit your personal freedom. Maybe for some extreme forms of addiction, but not nicotine. That’s just a bad habit, you’re still an adult with your mental faculties intact.

The question is: which retrictions are OK? They should of course be reasonable and effective, and based on scientific evidence. I’m not sure if this is a good description of the war against smoking. Moralism has probably played a major role, as well.

In any case: “voluntary” is a somewhat fuzzy term when it comes to addiction.