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According to the Canadian Council for Tobacco Control, last week's National Non-Smoking Week promoted "the right of individuals to breathe air unpolluted by tobacco smoke." Read: Forbid individuals to smoke on private property. One of the main axes of the anti-smoking crusaders is the prohibition of smoking in private businesses open to the public, conveniently labelled "public places."

Tobacco Control, an international journal devoted to the anti-smoking jihad, recently argued that "[t]he tobacco industry has co-opted and manipulated the hospitality industry to promote its agenda of preserving the social acceptability of smoking and preventing and opposing smoke-free restaurant policies by promoting the idea of 'accommodation' of smokers and non-smokers ..."

The words "private" and "property" are notoriously absent from the Tobacco Control article, as from virtually all writings of anti-smoking activists. The concept of private property is also absent from standard tobacco industry arguments against smoking bans or regulations. Both sides of the barricades seem to overlook the idea that restaurants, bars and workplaces are private businesses, and that private property rights are more efficient than government control to reconcile smokers' and anti-smokers' preferences.

Both evidence and plain common sense suggest that the risk of second-hand tobacco smoke will be the hoax of the 20th century. Yet, let us suppose that second-hand smoke is indeed dangerous to non-smokers' health. Would this be a reason to regulate or forbid smoking in public places? The answer is, No.

Social life is full of risk, from contagious diseases (like Hepatitis C) to man-caused accidents (say, road accidents). Most of these risks cannot, and should not, be reduced to zero, because eliminating them would impose unwarranted costs on many individuals. In France, 115,000 skiers are injured every year, and more than 50 killed, often when hit by other skiers. In the Canadian Rockies, skiers continue to defy avalanches. Each individual freely chooses whether or not to run these risks and get the benefits of the associated activities.

To maximize profits, a restaurant owner must mediate between the demands of his different clientele. Depending on how much his customers are willing to pay to have their smoking, or non-smoking, preferences catered to, and on the cost of satisfying them, the restaurant owner will decide what kind of environment to offer. The market will show its usual diversity, presumably with non-smoking, smoking-only, and dual-section restaurants.

Or look at the problem this way. Suppose that a restaurateur puts up a big sign saying, "Smokers and Lovers of Second-hand Smoke Only." What would be wrong with that? Smoke haters would only have to patronize other businesses. Indeed, before the Quebec government adopted its 1998 anti-tobacco legislation, much diversity was observed, as 28% of the province's businesses had (voluntarily in most cases) chosen to ban smoking.

One advantage of private property and freedom of contract is to allow minority tastes to be catered to. This is why businesses cater to homosexuals, vegetarians, the obese, why they offer kosher food and foie gras, etc. On the contrary, political and bureaucratic processes coercively handicap some individuals in order to favour others.

The subsidized public-health intelligentsia argues that hospitality venues don't lose money when a smoking ban is imposed. Now, if this were true, no business owner would allow smoking on his premises. And let's get serious: It is ludicrous to trust the diktats of bureaucrats who have never owned a business, and of politicians who are mainly used to robbing businesses.

Against freedom of choice and market diversity, the magic words of "public health" are the final argument, and not only about tobacco. McDonald's is forbidden to sell Snoopy dolls in China because, argued a state newspaper, the promotion "instigated a buying spree ... and seriously affected the physical and mental health of children and teenagers." In the United States, McDonald's was sued by obese customers who, like smokers, claimed they were not responsible for their choices (happily, the first such suit was just dismissed by a New York judge). "Public health" has become a spare label for authoritarianism and statism.

It is not a coincidence that the "hospitality" industry is more hospitable in a capitalist, free-market, private property context, than in a socialist, statist, public property environment. For it is in the interest of private entrepreneurs to be hospitable to their customers, while the state is mainly friendly to powerful majorities and politically correct minorities. The apartheid against smokers is destroying our whole hospitality culture. It is also turning nominally private spaces and businesses into de facto state property.

The next prohibitionist frontier will be private homes and cars. Many steps in this direction have already been taken. In most jurisdictions, one cannot smoke in a boutique located in one's own home (as are many country convenience stores, for example). A University of Moncton law professor argues that parents who smoke may be violating the Criminal Code.

National Non-Something Weeks should be seen as what they are: regressions to a repressive society.

Pierre Lemieux is co-director of the Economics and Liberty Research Group at the University of Québec in Outaouais, and a research fellow at the Independent Institute in California. E-mail: PL@pierrelemieux.org