BALTIMORE - On June 5, 2006, the Howard County Council will vote on a bill to ban smoking in all restaurants and bars. If the Robey-Ulman bill is passed, Howard County will join Prince George’s, Montgomery and Talbot Counties in legislating smoke-free establishments.

Yet for Marylanders who detest cigarette smoke for health or personal reasons and for Marylanders who savor the experience of lighting up a cigarette, state and county tobacco policies are contradictory and not altogether helpful.

Maryland officially values green space, farming and its agricultural heritage. But it also tries to discourage the activity of farming tobacco, even though tobacco is both a lucrative market for farmers and a cornerstone in the state’s agricultural history. The state also taxes cigarettes higher than any other retail product and profits $1.20 for every pack of cigarettes sold.

Ban proponents claim they are working on behalf of the majority of consumers, who supposedly want smoking prohibited in all public spaces. But this points to another contradiction. Currently, in counties where smoking is allowed in bars, restaurants, hotels and motels, state law limits smoking areas to no more than 40 percent of the total area of the establishment. But the law does not mandate that smoking areas be created.

The economic, political and health contradictions of tobacco’s sale and use do not stop with smoking bans. The tobacco paradox is that Maryland profits from the very activity its state government seeks to discourage and various jurisdictions aim to ban. Despite the more than adequate funding of public anti-smoking programs available from the multi-state settlement with tobacco companies, the Maryland legislature has increased the cigarette tax two times in the last six years.

According to federal Centers for Disease Control guidelines, Maryland falls short of recommended spending on tobacco prevention programs — the state allocates just $9.2 million of its tobacco revenue yearly for these uses — just 30 percent of the CDC recommendation.

If Maryland bars and restaurants can voluntarily be smoke-free and if the state recognizes no right to smoke, it is surprising that anti-smoking advocates believe there is a need for a ban. After all, if consumer demand for no-smoking establishments is as intense as those advocates claim, then owners, in an effort to make money, would forbid smoking in their establishments, as the law entitles them to do.

Interestingly, tobacco smoke can be prohibited outright while other, arguably more dangerous, emissions remain legal (albeit regulated): internal combustion engine exhaust, and factory and industrial production emissions, as well as the chemicals present in new carpet, cleaning supplies, paint and other potential pollutants that are used in “public” places.

Full-scale smoking bans are as nonsensical as ordering all restaurants and bars to allow smoking. In a free market, businesses should be free to allow legal behaviors and customers should be free to choose where to spend their disposable income and leisure time. Similarly, restaurant and bar employees enter into the same type of contractual agreement seen in all other types of employment, even in the so-called dangerous professions.

Today, the health risks and addictive nature of smoking are well-known to adults of legal age. Yet high taxation and regulation obstruct the demand and production of a still-legal commodity, benefiting state governments and hurting consumers and local producers.

While Maryland is unlikely to turn back the clock on its quarter-century long settlement with tobacco companies, legislators can and should take this opportunity to enact an arrangement that would allow properly licensed businesses to permit or ban smoking on their premises and make independent health and economic assessments.

Alison Lake is managing editor at the Maryland Public Policy Institute. She can be reached at alake@mdpolicy.org.

Examiner