Public Space and a Smoke-Free Society

2017/06/01

Suppose, for example, there was a restaurant with a rule that customers must be completely naked inside. Would that be an obstacle to me deciding my own way of life? What if it were a coffee shop where smoking was mandatory? Personally, I find no appeal in either, but as long as the rules are announced in advance and the possibility of "not using" the establishment is substantially guaranteed, the existence of such a shop somewhere in the world would make no difference to my life (or the lives of all those who, like me, wish to live unrelated to such acts). Nevertheless, can the prohibition of such shops by public authority be justified?

The conclusion from J.S. Mill's "Harm Principle," for instance, would be that it cannot. This idea—that the state is only permitted to prohibit an act if it causes harm to others—is based on the principle that every individual is equally guaranteed the capacity and right to judge what is necessary for their own life and what brings them happiness. In other words, this is (one of) the cornerstones of modern society and democracy as a system in which everyone participates equally.

Of course, while it is fine that the harm principle allows for the prohibition of murder or injury, it goes without saying that things like noise or vibration—which are hard to call "harm" but may hinder my enjoyment of my life (nuisances)—become an issue. However, even so, one cannot deny that there are people who enjoy such things, as seen in the occasional hits of "explosive sound screenings" of movies or immersive screenings involving movement and wind. Where is the way for such people and those who are not (including myself) to coexist? The answer likely lies in the physical existence of space.

If the substance of smoke obstructs my self-determination regarding health, what is necessary to prevent that is for smoke not to enter my surroundings and for the substantial possibility of me not entering a space with smoke to be guaranteed—nothing more, nothing less. And if what is needed to ensure this is the separation of space according to the presence or absence of smoke, then "completely non-smoking" and "completely smoking" are equivalent. If people who like the presence of smoke and those who do not can breathe different air in completely different spaces, we can maximize the possibility of happiness as envisioned by each individual.

Of course, the next problem lies in how to handle spaces that cannot be separated in that way—typically public spaces where all kinds of people come and go, such as roads and public transportation. If a safe option among multiple choices, a standard that interferes with others as little as possible, needs to be adopted here, then non-smoking will be chosen. If, apart from public spaces, spaces where one can enjoy tobacco smoke to one's heart's content are substantially guaranteed, such regulations should not become an excessive restriction on each person's life. In this case, the regulation of public space is ethically justified by the lack of regulation in private space.

Regulations in European countries that ban indoor smoking to avoid trapping secondhand smoke (the primary issue) have often been contrasted with the Japanese approach of banning street smoking for reasons of aesthetics. However, the former also allows smoking to be brought into public spaces where there are people whose views on tobacco or personal circumstances are unknown. And while smoke may indeed be carried away by the wind outdoors, it does not immediately cease to exist, nor does the danger of fire from a lit cigarette disappear. European-style regulations are creating something quite the opposite of a society that enables the coexistence of people with different life plans; the cause can be seen in the fact that they attempted to regulate private spaces before public spaces.

Partitioning specific, limited spaces for people with certain orientations/intentions/tastes is not contradictory to the existence of public spaces where diverse people coexist, provided that the nature of the space is clearly stated and freedom of entry and exit is allowed. Nevertheless, passive smoking measures for the Tokyo Olympics propose a style of regulation that forces one side as a general principle even for partitioned spaces like restaurants. This is difficult to justify, at least as long as it is based on the principle of self-determination, and it may result in creating something different from the modernity we stand upon.

When we exclude the possibility of spatial partitioning—the foundation of a free society that trusts in the autonomy of each individual—and attempt to paint over every space with the standards of a publicly open field, the tyranny of that unreliable entity known as "the common sense of the majority" reveals itself. We should recall that this was exactly what Mill was most wary of.