My 1st Amendment trumps your 5th Amendment

How ironic that a newspaper protected by the First Amendment advocates denying property owners their Fifth Amendment rights (“Tobacco Grades”, 1/17/2006). The issue of secondhand smoke is not smokers versus non-smokers, but the rights of restaurant owners to control their private property as they desire. If a restaurant allows smoking and you dislike it, go somewhere else that caters to your smoke-free desire. That is the proper behavior in a country that respects freedom.

Over the past few decades smoking has declined, but rather than trumpet this success and encourage individuals to continue making healthy choices the American Lung Association seeks to impose a government-enforced tobacco prohibition. To this end they claim a public health crisis by attributing 38,000 deaths to secondhand smoke, a statistic discredited as junk science long ago.

If we grade on individual rights and truth, the Free Press and the American Lung Association get an F.

[Letter to the Editor - Detroit Free Press. Published 01/21/2006]