New York City is taking aim at residents' personal health decisions-yet again.
Many will remember when former Mayor Michael Bloomberg tried to limit the size of soft drinks sold in the city. He got the ban on sodas larger than 16 oz. passed, but it was later overturned in court.
That made headlines. But for years New York has been battling cigarette smoking, restricting areas where smokers can light up and setting ever higher minimum prices for packs of cigarettes.
Now city official are at it again, with uber-liberal Mayor Bill De Blasio backing a plan to raise cigarette prices and restrict the number of stores that can sell them.
Bills before the City Council would raise the minimum price for a pack of cigarettes from $10.50 to $13. Pharmacies would be banned from selling smokes and the number of tobacco sales permits would be cut from 9,000 to 6,000.
E-cigarettes would also be heavily regulated.
New York City Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett told the New York Daily News the goal was "to make it easier to quit and harder to smoke, and these bills do exactly that. They do it by limiting availability and accessibility."
"We want to use every tool that we have to help people stop smoking, even if it's tough," De Blasio added.
More than 900,000 New York City residents still smoke-a figure that is significantly down since the mid-1990s, when the city began cracking down on the habit. So the strategy apparently works.
But while the city's may have the best interests of citizens at heart, is any of this really government's place?
Smoking is legal. And adults have the choice whether or not to smoke. When did it become government's business to interfere in that free choice? Tobacco could be outlawed, which would be foolish and work about as well as banning booze during Prohibition, but it's an option if tobacco is really "Public Enemy No. 1" as De Blasio has said. We already do it with street drugs. Like it or not, it's a valid exercise of government power.
But trying to pressure adults into conforming to the city's viewpoint? Where does government get that kind of power.
Don't get us wrong. We are against smoking. But we for small government and adults exercising free will and personal responsibility. And this kind of action fails on all counts. But it will probably pass. Smokers have few friends. And apparently in New York, the same can be said of personal freedom.