Predictably, there was no righteous roar from public, no unleashing of civil libertarian anger clamoring that the Big Apple's nanny state had, this time, gone too far. I will go out on a limb and say New Yorkers' tepid response had less to do with their appreciation of health concerns and wisdom of the legislation, but has almost everything to do with the fact that a) they don't smoke and b) they don't like the smell of smoke.
Of course, this is not what the average New Yorker will tell you. Being a bright crowd, they'll probably come up with some seemingly plausible arguments for why banning butts from parks and beaches is a justifiable health concern. They may even toss in a statement about "protecting the rights of non-smokers." None of their individual arguments will add up (there's no evidence that, outside of living or working with a smoker, second-hand smoke causes disease in an appreciable way), but that won't stop the insistence that the ban is justified, because my dear New Yorkers will have fallen victim to the "nebulous bad-ness" bias.
I don't know if anyone has identified this bias before, so let me outline its contours: something or someone has a number of attributes that are kind-of bad, but even though each attribute on its own wouldn't justify eliminating the thing or person in question, when you add them all up, the thing/person has got to go.
We saw this in the run-up and wake of the Iraq invasion. Saddam was a bad-ass dictator (true, but the US wasn't invading a lot of bad-ass dictators who were either our allies or who didn't sit among oil rich nations). Saddam was developing nukes that he could use to destabilize the region or even hand over to terrorists (no hard evidence of nukes, and even less evidence or logic as to why Saddam would give any to Islamists who hated him). Saddam was an unpredictable, suicidal, rogue leader (even though his history showed him to be calculating and, again, even though the US doesn't go around plucking off rogue leaders). The list could go on. But in spite of the fact that there was no one clear reason to overthrow Saddam, when you added up all the half-baked reasons people were left with a feeling "Well, he's just really bad, so I guess we've got to take him out."
Now imagine the "nebulous badness" bias at work in a criminal trial. "Okay, so there's no hard evidence that this guy killed his father. But did you see him in the courtroom? He didn't look so upset about his dad's death. Hasn't he also committed other violent crimes before? And he hasn't paid child support for years. Let's face it; this guy's bad news. Society's clearly better off with him locked up - and, you know, he's probably better off too. Maybe he'll get a GED or find Jesus. When you think about is, how could anyone sensible argue to let this guy go free?"
Our justice system, thankfully, frowns upon convictions based on "nebulous badness." It prefers proof that the accused has broken a specific law before removing him or her from society.
Legislatures don't have such strict standards, of course. Laws are passed all the time in order to improve the common good, but without the need of "proving" the the common good will, indeed, be improved. But even so, lawmakers are asked to have reasonable justification for their laws.
NYC city councilors, lacking any such reasonable justification for banning cigarettes from everywhere except sidewalks and private apartments, have relied instead on "nebulous badness." Let's face it, cigarettes are smelly and they kill. So, they may not kill people who happen to be sitting 10 feet down-wind on the public beach, buy why quibble - the stuff is bad.
What would be preferable is if the city were more honest. They're not banning smoking to protect the lives of innocent New Yorkers. They are banning something that the majority of New Yorkers find unpleasant, and couching that ban in language about public health and individual rights so it feels less like "tyranny of the majority" and feels more like "the right thing to do."
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