Smoking and Fuming

FOR far too many years, almost 40, the people of Spain were treated like minors by Franco's dictatorship. But it seems that some people among us still yearn for that era. The new antismoking law in Spain, which went into effect with the new year and bans smoking in workplaces and restricts it in many bars and restaurants, is a case in point: it is a clear example of the state trying to regulate citizens' private lives and customs. As such, it is a measure that is far more befitting of Franco than a democracy.

Now, I should say immediately that I am a smoker, like nearly a third of my fellow Spaniards, and I've never tried to quit. I know smoking isn't good for my health, but neither is walking in the polluted streets of Madrid or Barcelona, nor is living in a world where the United States refuses to sign on to the Kyoto Protocol.

Many of my friends are smokers too; many are not. But we have always managed to come to terms by asking if anyone minds our smoking - without the government's intervention.

Of course, nonsmokers should not be subjected to secondhand smoke nor obliged to suffer its effects, and in this vein, limits should be placed on smokers in enclosed, common-use spaces. But the government's argument that it is seeking to improve public health is hypocritical. The Spanish Treasury takes in colossal revenues, direct and indirect, thanks to this pernicious habit. Every time the government needs to find a way to finance some exceptional expense, a new cigarette tax is levied. The implicit message to Spanish citizens is this: "Smoke! Smoke more - so we can balance our budget."

Indeed, to escape the taint of hypocrisy, Spain would have to match its new antismoking measures with an array of others fighting everything else in the world that is at all harmful. Nowhere have I ever heard, for example, that cars are obliged to carry, just above the driver's-side door, a warning, like those on cigarette boxes, that "Driving a car may cause death, grisly amputations, quadriplegia and involuntary manslaughter."

I have also never seen anyone lay blame on sunbathers who go to the beach and almost drown, or mountain climbers who get lost and fall off cliffs, and whose rescue incurs a tremendous expense and endangers the lives of others. Nobody is forcing anyone to swim in the ocean or climb mountains, just as nobody is forcing smokers to smoke, and yet the latter are regarded practically as criminals.

People should be allowed to make decisions about their health as they see fit, even if that means undermining it. To keep someone from smoking on the job, if he or she has a private office where smoking does not endanger or annoy anyone, is an unacceptable act of paternalism.

As far as bars and