A friend of mine back in Nevada used to be a bartender at a pub located in a bowling alley. He and I would argue the merits of a smoking ban, usually ending in him agreeing it is the business owners decision, not that of the government. Yet, he somehow still supported the ban.

A year after the corrupt smoking ban in Nevada (the bill language allowed smoking in Casino’s, pushing millions of dollars out of smaller businesses and in to the pockets of major Casino corporations) went in to effect, this individual found himself working at an empty bar and pondering what he would do when the job went belly up. Before the ban, the bar had 20+ slot machines that were generating $10,000+ per month in revenue. After the ban, the owner had to pull the slot machines from the bar because they were costing more than they were bringing in.

Did you catch that? The smoking ban costs this one bar more than $10,000 a month in revenue! People want to smoke, drink and gamble. If they can’t do that in the neighborhood watering hole, they’ll go straight to the casino. And that is exactly what happened in Nevada.

So, while my buddy was happy he no longer had to inhale smoke (which was his CHOICE, by the way), he quickly found the business he worked for failing financially and his job became threatened. And now casino’s have even more smokers in them, meaning a lot more second hand smoke. The establishments that were made “safe” via the smoking ban are now hurting because very few people actually spend time in them compared to casinos.

Wonderful isn’t it?

And now we hear that the smoking bans across the country are causing more drunk driving accidents. You read that right. According to research published by the Journal of Public Economics, the rate of fatal alcohol-related car accidents increased by 13% in a typical county containing 680,000 people.

The researchers analysed data from 120 American counties, 20 of which had banned smoking. They found a smoking ban increased fatal alcohol-related car accidents by 13% in a typical county containing 680,000 people. This is the equivalent of 2.5 fatal accidents (equivalent to approximately six deaths). Furthermore, drunk-driving smokers have not changed their ways over time. In areas where the ban has been in place for longer than 18 months, the increased accident rate is 19%.

The findings, say the pair, are consistent with the suggestion that smokers are driving farther to alternative places to drink. This may be because they are driving to bars with outdoor seating, or to bars which are not enforcing the smoking ban.

Another explanation is that some smokers are “jurisdiction shopping” to places where they may puff. Accident rates can be especially high where border-hopping to still-smoky bars is possible. Accidents in Delaware county in Pennsylvania increased by 26% after the next-door state of Delaware introduced a smoking ban in 2002. Similarly, when Boulder county banned smoking, fatal accidents in Jefferson county, between Boulder county and Denver, went up by 40%. How this weighs up against the long-term health effects of smoking bans is unclear. But it serves as a warning to well-meaning legislators.

The moral of the story here is that more regulation and less liberty simply isn’t helping anything.