It may seem strange to oppose a smoking ban on a site dedicated to health care policy, but I'm going to try.

The case for smoking bans may seem a slam-dunk. Smoking is bad for human health, though not all who smoke develop cancer or other diseases, and some people develop lung cancer and so forth without ever having lit a cigarette.

But there are other important ideals that get trampled in the rush to smoking bans. One is freedom of association, or your ability to patronize or work at an establishment based in part on whether it allows smoking. Another is property rights, or the ability of a business owner to allow acts, legal otherwise, on his property.

One smoking ban advocate writing in a Minnesota newspaper, however, says rights be damned: "I am not going to debate what is in the Bill of Rights we all hold so dear." In other words: I don't care what the Bill of Rights says. As a friend of mine puts it, "Some of us, obviously, hold it a little more dearly than others."

Smoking bans, prohibitions on trans fats in restaurant foods and health care policies that rely on pay-or-play, individual mandates or at the extreme, outlawing private health insurance, are of the same cloth, trampling personal rights in the name of the public good.