In January, Washington, D.C. will join the nearly 500 cities nationwide that have thwarted the free market’s accommodation of heterogeneous preferences and have ordered private property owners to forbid their invitees from engaging in otherwise legal behavior. I am speaking, of course, of Washington’s forthcoming smoking ban.
The Washington Post was gracious enough to permit me to explain on its website why I think this is a bad idea. A longer version of the argument — which should be wholly familiar to regular TOTM readers — is here.
(By the way, TOTM’s policies permit this sort of shameless self-promotion.)