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Volume CXXXII, Number 21 |
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The cost of too much regulation
TODD BUELL
COLUMNIST
I had given up writing about smoking policies until a friend slipped into my mailbox an unusual New York Times headline. It read: "Bouncer dies, and family blames city's smoking ban." We should keep the ramifications of that headline in mind as we think about our approach to smoking here at Bowdoin, and, more broadly, as the state of Maine considers a law that would ban smoking in bars.
Probing into the story, one finds both inexplicable tragedy and an unexplored side of intrusive regulation. A bouncer, 32 year-old Dana Blake, was murdered after he told two brothers that they could not smoke at the bar. Police are still investigating the details of the murder, but it is clear that Blake's desire to enforce city law contributed to his death. The Times* quotes Blake's brother as saying, "Why does somebody have to suffer because somebody wants to pass a cigarette law?"
This death is obviously a grave loss to Blake's family. However, there is also a sick irony in this death. Proponents of broad-sweeping prohibitions on smoking in bars and restaurants advocate such measures in the interest of employees. They ineluctably bring out medical studies and experts who remind us of the perils of second-hand smoke. They argue that we cannot leave decisions about smoking up to individual establishment owners because it unfairly puts their employees at risk of the deleterious effects of second-hand smoke.
This argument does have some merit to it. However, Blake's death in New York City should reveal the other side of the debate: the financial and emotional cost of enforcing such intrusive regulations. Obviously what happened to Blake is an extreme case, but it exposes the cost of regulation. This cost is illustrated well when examined locally in the context of Bowdoin parties.
Having lived in a social house for two years, I have hosted or helped organize a number of parties. A party host has many things with which to concern himself: ensuring that partiers do not enter or exit with alcohol, making sure that partiers have their IDs checked and their hands are marked appropriately, providing non-drinkers with non-alcoholic beverages, being accessible quickly in case security arrives, making sure no one gets excessively intoxicated, etc.
Routinely, there were students who would smoke in the Quinby House basement. As a tacit policy, we allowed students to smoke in the basement as long as the smoke did not get so thick that the smoke detector was in danger of being activated. The policy freed me to perform more important tasks. By not having to worry about smoking, I could concentrate on my other aforementioned duties as party host.
The example shows that increased regulations, like anything else, have what economists call "opportunity costs." Every moment that one is enforcing a regulation, one is taking up time that one could spend doing something else.
Currently Maine is considering a law that would ban smoking in all bars. Most of the bars that I have frequented are not well staffed. They have the bare minimum of wait staff, bartenders, and bouncers. Requiring these busy staff members to enforce another regulation will likely make it harder for them to enforce the regulations they already have to enforce-like the 21 year-old drinking age.
If enforcing the regulations becomes too much of a burden, a bar will either ignore them (as happens in some bars in California that I have been to or heard of) or the bar will shut down-further damaging Maine's economy.
Though one should be careful not to read too much into the circumstances surrounding the tragic death of Dana Blake in New York, the incident helps illustrate that perhaps not all employees will be happy to have another rule that they have to enforce-even if the rule is enacted "in their interests."
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