Big Nanny Is Watching You

A couple of weeks ago, I interviewed Roger Valdez, director of tobacco prevention for Public Health– Seattle & King County. He is in charge of Seattle-area enforcement of the statewide smoking ban approved by voters in November. I call him the tobacco czar.

We were talking about how enforcement was working out, including the 25-foot rule. In the midst of our chat, Valdez said something remarkable.

"Americans think they have a lot of rights they really don't have. Smoking is one of those things where people think they have the right to smoke, but you don't." He used "you" in the plural. "You have no right to smoke. It's an addiction. It's something you should see a doctor about."

He went on to tell me that people have no right to smoke even in their private residences.

"The condo association can ban it, and you have no legal recourse," Valdez said.

Today, your local bar; tomorrow, your home.

Oh my.

A City Fit for The Amish?

Has it really come to this? Government officials—well paid by taxpayers, excellent health care benefits and pensions included—talk this way to taxpaying citizens, and we stand aside because bureaucrats like Valdez "know" how we should behave, even behind closed doors?

You hear all kinds of hyperbole from the lips of nanny statists these days. In Seattle, it ties in nicely with the city's long tradition of hyperearnest citizens, people the critic H.L. Mencken called "uplifters." Those are the folks who "know" what's good for everyone else and have no tolerance for anything they consider against the rules of clean living. They seek to ban whatever activity they don't like. That's often the way of social conservatives, the people who helped bring about Prohibition in the last century and today want to ban a woman's right to choose or eliminate gay rights. They know what's good for everyone because, often, their religious conviction tells them so.

But of late, liberals and progressives around the country are acting just as religious, except many wrap their arguments in the secular prophecy of public-health officials and all-knowing advocacy groups. Progressives are going after "rights" connected to behavior they consider unhealthful. They want to ban smoking completely. They want to so limit alcohol consumption that the speakeasy, once again, becomes reality. They want to ban gun ownership. They want to control what people eat. In Seattle, nannies like Mayor Greg Nickels want to drive strip clubs out of business. And, if progressives cannot get their way through education and mass-media campaigns, then they will resort to the ballot box, coercion, and in the case of Washington state government, a call for social discrimination.

There is a lot of talk about rights in the air right now. Last week, Samuel Alito, President George W. Bush's nominee to the Supreme Court, was grilled by a Senate committee about just what rights Americans—especially women—enjoy in our society. Do Americans have an absolute right to privacy, for example? That's not a minor question—it is at the core of abortion rights.

But all rights are local, when push comes to shove. It's the local authorities who will enforce the nanny laws. The cops will be busy in Seattle now that the city's historic progressive puritanism is back in full scold mode. Right now, Seattle has a suite of new restrictions that make Rain City look like a no-fun zone to the rest of the world.

The most prominent of these is the smoking ban, the most restrictive in the nation. No indoor smoking in any business and no outdoor smoking within 25 feet of the entrance to any publicly accessible building. The ban affects the entire state, but in densely packed parts of the city, the 25-foot rule creates a dicey situation for smokers: They literally have to stand in the street to smoke legally. But more on that in a moment.

Last fall, Nickels and the Seattle City Council imposed new restrictions on the city's four strip clubs. The next day, hundreds of newspapers around the world picked up a wire story that made "world-class" Seattle come off like Amish country.

But then, the city has been trying to prevent outward signs of civic wildness for years. The City Council last month banned certain beers and wines favored by the poor. The city has tried to ban posters on power poles—shot down in court in 2002—and when Mark Sidran was city attorney in 1993, he tried to impose no-sitting laws to sweep the homeless from city sidewalks.

And let's not forget the city's ridiculous All-Ages Dance Ordinance, which is meant to choke off the all-ages music scene, or the city's club task force, which many people in the club scene read as an attempt to hassle clubs for the 21-and-over crowd.