In response to Dr. Cupp’s 9-7-16 Letter to the Editor, I agree that the freedom to smoke should not give license to inconsiderate behaviors.  Freedoms and responsibilities do need to go together.  I also see potential for creating win/win solutions here.  If existing rules are enforced, and smokers stand twenty feet from building entries, that is win/win.  Moreover, the process of devising win/win solutions could provide important life lessons for many persons involved.

Nonetheless, I do wish to offer a slippery slope perspective to this debate.  I’ve watched a number of small freedoms disappear, at five to ten year intervals, for three decades now.  Over time these small losses of freedom can become larger ones.  Precedents, in turn, can then be set for different freedoms to be removed in other areas of life.  For example, in the early 2000s some businesses began to disallow their employees to smoke at work, even outside.  Five years later, certain companies began telling employees that they could not smoke even when off of the clock.  This, in turn, set a precedent for other companies to assert that persons 20 or more pounds overweight need to lose weight or risk being replaced.

Fears of rising group insurance premiums have driven some of these policies.  I like my Blue Cross/Shield benefits, but I would not vote to give insurance companies the power to shape freedoms and restrictions for the overall country.  Social class also seems to matter here.  If smokers represented the American upper class we would not be having these debates.  These are among the social forces setting the stage for this slippery slope.  What about its possible implications for WSC?

Hypothetically speaking, let us say that some people wish to ban outdoor smoking because they view it as an eye sore to the aesthetic beauty of WSC.  A slippery slope perspective would then warrant our asking, “Who could be the designated eye sores twenty years from now?”  Is it possible that we’d follow cultural trajectories and target overweight persons in 2036?  How about those wearing tattoos?  “Unibrows?”  I hope this sounds ridiculous.  That’s my point.  Twenty years ago the idea that anyone would try to remove freedoms from a few persons smoking cigarettes outside would have sounded insane.

It would not be difficult for WSC to devise win/win solutions that protect freedoms and show consideration to non-smokers.  And let me clarify that I am not encouraging cigarette smoking.  I watched my father, a heavy smoker, die of lung cancer.  Indeed those who smoke put their bodies at risk.  However, smoking is a freedom that I believe should be protected.  Why?  Well, slippery slopes put democracy itself at risk.  And losing freedoms can become a very bad habit.

Dr. Todd Greene

Associate Professor of Sociology