There was a ten-second period when I thought about resenting this ban on behalf of the smokers who currently exist, and in memory of the smoker in me who was overcome (after a decade of titanic struggle) 13 years ago. What I couldn’t do, however, was to construct an objection on the basis of political philosophy. In other words, I couldn’t proceed from a generalised concept of the relationship between the individual and society in order to solve the question: “Should people be allowed to smoke in public places?”Normblog offers a helping hand: "preventing people from smoking anywhere in public, even if they could do so harmlessly vis-à-vis others, is paternalistic and illiberal."
Indeed it is.
