One of the characteristics of our time is the growth of a long-standing and very unfortunate human trait: the belief that by repeatedly stating something that is not so it will become so, that is, that the objective reality that we don’t like will become an objective reality that we like, because we said so, so many times.
It is abundantly clear that smoking bans hurt business, and this good piece from Jacob Sullum reconfirms that. He talks sense:
"I’ve always been puzzled by claims that smoking bans are good for the bar and restaurant industry. If so, why would the people whose livelihoods are a stake stubbornly continue to permit smoking and resist anti-smoking ordinances?"
The antismoking industry and its political enablers never stop saying that smoking bans are good for business. They lie and they know it, of course, but, once again, they believe that by insisting on the lie ad infinitum people will come to believe that antismoking is the way to go, and thus comply and adjust as best they can to weather the truly grievous social and economic problems smoking bans cause.
Although antismokers’ behaviour is morally contemptible, from the pragmatic point of view one cannot say that these sociopaths are ineffective, because too often the technique works just fine. Just look at Goebbels and Nazi Germany or at the dogged belief that smoking "causes" cancer in spite of the glaring and objective realities that cancer has existed since the dawn of life, that cancer is a leading cause of death in persons who never smoked, and that not even one death or disease can be scientifically demonstrated to be "caused by smoking."
What may work on emotions does not work with economics, as the Marxist experiment clearly demonstrated. Repeating that smoking bans are good for business while ignoring figures and the desperation of business owners will not make economy adapt to ideology and everything is not going to be all right.
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