Albany

When I was a kid — and I swear this is true — my mother would send me out to buy cigarettes. She'd hand me a couple of dollars, and I'd run down to the corner store to buy a pack. I never returned empty-handed.

That was three decades ago, and I mention it now to demonstrate how profoundly our view of cigarettes has changed in the years since.

The shift, both legal and cultural, is inarguably for the better because it has saved millions of lives. Most of us can agree on that, I hope.

But there's broad disagreement about whether additional restrictions are necessary. Where's the appropriate line between thoughtful regulation and nanny-state overkill?

Two votes this month raise the question. First, the Albany Common Council banned smoking in all public parks. Then, the Albany County Legislature followed by banning cigarette sales in stores with licensed pharmacies — including supermarkets.

Good ideas? I'm not sold on either.

The park ban was touted as a way to protect the innocent from secondhand smoke, but the threat seems slight, at best. And isn't it odd to fret about cigarette smoke when Washington and Lincoln parks are crossed by thousands of exhaust-spewing cars each day?

With the pharmacy-sale ban, the primary argument was that people shouldn't be confronted with cigarettes in a place that's about health. Somebody might go to a pharmacy for Nicorette and come face-to-face with a pack of Marlboros.

"It'd be like going to a detox center and being faced with alcohol," Amy Klein, executive director of Capital District Community Gardens but speaking as a private citizen, said during Monday night's debate.

Actually, they sell beer at many pharmacies and supermarkets. Why not ban that, too?

Why stop there? Let's protect the dieter from Ho Hos and the heart patient from fatty meat and butter. Salty foods should also go, since many people have high-blood pressure.

Not to worry, though. Fruits, vegetables and skim milk will all remain perfectly legal. Bon appetit!

OK, so I'm exaggerating. But the fundamental point is this: In a free society, we have to accept that some among us are going to make bad decisions. Some of us are going to eat pork rinds. Others may, yes, smoke cigarettes. But those are individual decisions to make.

Laws aimed at keeping cigarettes from kids or protecting restaurant workers from second-hand smoke are commendable. But these two new laws — and many more like them nationally — seem mostly about restricting legal behavior because some find it distasteful.

For an opposing view, I called Tim Nichols, a legislator from Latham. He's the lead sponsor of county's pharmacy law and a former lobbyist for the American Lung Association of New York State.

Nichols, a Democrat, noted that every new cigarette restriction has been met with the same criticisms as the county ban, but each was subsequently accepted with time. He thinks it's wrong to view cigarettes as just another unhealthy product in the marketplace.

"We have to stop thinking about tobacco that way," Nichols said. "Tobacco is totally unique and totally deadly."

OK, then why not dispatch with the half-measures and make it illegal? Why not treat it like, say, heroin?

Nichols said he could see that someday happening — and if tobacco was being newly introduced today, it probably wouldn't be legal, he said. But Nichols added that our history with prohibiting alcohol and some drugs proves that outright bans rarely succeed.

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"We're regulating tobacco," he said. "We're not taking it away completely."

Albany County lawmakers are clearly comfortable with nanny-type regulations, having restricted things both trans fats and Styrofoam containers. But the ban on pharmacy sales passed narrowly, and it isn't clear that County Executive Dan McCoy will sign it into law.

Nichols expressed surprise that the ban has generated such interest and opposition, given that most people don't smoke.

But I don't think you need to be a smoker to be concerned about such laws. Issues surrounding individual responsibility and government's role in limiting choices are fundamental. They should be questioned and debated.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not in favor of smoking.

I know how destructive it can be: Both my grandfathers had smoking-related emphysema and one died from lung cancer. I don't want to go back to the days when a 10-year-old could walk into a store and emerge with a pack of cigarettes.

But if an adult is aware of the risks and wants to do the same, it's not my business.

cchurchill@timesunion.com • 518-454-5442 • @chris_churchill