Opinion No smoking in the car?
We must not regulate away every behavior that appears to be questionable
Status: 10.07.2023 | Reading time: 3 minutes
It’s about the political culture – about the free society, says Olaf Gersemann
Source: dpa/Britta Pedersen; Verena Bruning
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Federal Health Minister Karl Lauterbach is planning a smoking ban for car journeys with children and has received a lot of applause for it. But a cascade effect is already foreseeable. Because a ban rarely comes alone.
Very good reasons can be found for some of the many new dos and don’ts that have found their way into everyday life in Germany over the past few decades. They therefore quickly met with broad support. When it comes to preventing third parties from harming one’s own integrity, this is regularly the case – as with the ban on smoking on passenger planes.
In other cases, the paternalistic citizen may not mind at all if a ban helps to force his own ego to behave in ways he cannot bring himself to do.
But now Karl Lauterbach (SPD) wants to ban smoking in your own car as soon as children or pregnant women are driving – and that is definitely a different category. Here the Federal Minister of Health squints at the approval of those who can gain something from bans even if their own integrity is not the issue at all.
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Of course, smoking in the car is a serious handicap for passive smokers. Accusing the minister of “health mania”, as the FDP’s addiction policy spokeswoman does, therefore bypasses the problem.
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Rather, it is about the political culture: The free society thrives on the fact that it does not try to regulate away every behavior that appears questionable – but leaves a good deal to the civic individual responsibility.
One ban favors the next
This freedom is an impertinence for everyone involved – and for this very reason it is preferable to the alternative. That consists in shifting the impertinence: the responsibility is simply delegated to the community. But then everything that is not forbidden is not only allowed, but also implicitly approved.
The consequences of a culture of prohibition once it has been established are therefore inevitable cascading effects: one prohibition favors the next. Citizens relieved of personal responsibility are then confronted with a state that will either be even more overstretched or even more overwhelmed – and probably both at the same time.
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As soon as Lauterbach’s new violation of the ban was out in the world, anti-smoking lobbyists, medical representatives and the Greens immediately demanded further bans. A general ban on smoking in cars, for example. Or even a smoking ban in your own four walls – so that the smoker does not catch up there, which he previously had to do without when driving a car.
There was hardly any talk of protecting children and young people. But that was probably just stuffage from the start.
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