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A number of smoking bans are being considered around the country threatening to ban nicotine

from restaurants and bars.

Is such a blanket prohibition necessary or even fair?

Managing editor of Cato's regulation magazine, Tom Fiery, isn't sold on the idea at all.

He explains why in today's podcast.

Smoking ban in Maryland and Baltimore. Good idea or bad?

And smoking bans in several other places. Texas has one up on the ballot or up

for consideration, Illinois as well. It's sweeping the nation.

Good idea, a bad idea. I argue it's a bad idea because what we're trying to do is we're

trying to take a certain group of people probably a majority and I know my own

personal preference as far as what sort of an atmosphere we want to be in and we're trying to impose it on every person everywhere and that just strikes me as wrong and that libertarians and free market enthusiasts should oppose.

They should be as much opposed to a government-imposed ban on smoking everywhere

as they would be a government-imposed requirement at every place allow smoking.

But smoking is clearly a risky activity.

It's not good for anyone.

It's true, it's a risky activity, and we have the science to back that up.

And there's even science suggesting that secondhand smoke is risky.

Definitely chronic exposure to secondhand smoke is being shown to be risky

scientifically. However, we have all sorts of risks in society, all sorts of risks

...