Letter: Smoking ban is destructive

Dear Editor,

The May 14 article in the Star-Observer regarding the statewide indoor smoking ban concludes: “The bill will not apply to Wisconsin casinos because the Indian tribes that run them are sovereign nations.”

Once upon a time, all citizens of this state and nation were considered sovereign.

Our state constitution proclaims our “right of sovereignty” and declares, “All people are born equally free and independent, and have certain inherent rights; among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; to secure these rights, governments are instituted, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Now, some people are free and independent, free to use a legal product on their own property, while others are banned from doing same on theirs.

Being exposed to second-hand smoke is not the crime here. The real crime is the continual destruction of our constitutional rights at the hands of our elected representatives. By oath they pledged to “secure” rights, not to restrict them. Citizen demands to restrict their neighbor’s property rights does not absolve them of their deed.

In Article 1 of our state constitution it states, “The blessings of a free government can only be maintained... by frequent recurrence to fundamental principles.” The smoking ban bill is destructive to at least two of those fundamental principles: private property rights and equality under the law regardless of one’s race or ethnicity.

Tags: smoking ban, opinion, hudson, letter