You know, sometimes I give short shrift to meddlesome lawmakers and busy-body bureaucrats, merely harping on them for their unnecessary interventions instead of recognizing them for their creativity. Sometimes statists need love, too. For instance, the Virginia legislature should be congratulated for spending state time and money
making themselves relevant where the market place had made them irrelevant. Last February, the assembly passed a smoking ban, thereby depriving business owners of the right to make decisions about how to run the businesses they own, and depriving patrons of a choice between smoking and non-smoking establishments. Good thing, too, because the market place, responding to customer predilections as it's wont to do, had just about licked the "problem" the legislature sought to solve:
By February, when the legislature finally passed the ban after years of lobbying by anti-smoking advocates, about 66 percent of restaurants had already gone smoke-free in response to customer demand. A week ago, that proportion was about 75 percent.
So, the smoke had already been nearly eliminated-the ostensible reason for the law- but the legislature saved us from the potentially horrifying consequences of leaving in place the freedom to run an establishment with a smoking section. To be fair, I have heard that second-hand freedom can be very dangerous for state legislatures. In Arizona, the government continues its fight against the tiny fish used for pedicures, which have as yet helped many businesses and hurt no one. This innovative state meddling has banned fish pedicures in a handful of states (New Hampshire, Arizona, Texas, Florida), despite there being no threat posed by the trendy treatment, started in Asia and imported to the U.S. by a Virginia salon owner. In Florida, the practice was banned before it was even offered in state, so forward-looking are Floridian bureaucrats. A conservative group in Arizona is hitting back, bringing a suit on behalf of a small-business owner hurt by the ban:
A conservative watchdog group has filed a lawsuit against a state agency on behalf of a Gilbert salon owner who uses nibbling fish to remove dead skin from the feet of customers. The Goldwater Institute argued in its suit filed Monday that the Arizona Board of Cosmetology overstepped its bounds when it decided the fish perform pedicures and are subject to regulatory control. Cindy Vong opened Spa Fish Therapy last year and charged customers $30 to plunge their feet into a clean tank filled with fish.
As was the case in the Florida banning of fish pedicures, Arizona officials cited sanitation laws, saying it's impossible to sanitize live fish between customers, so the procedure is illegal. And, why did the Virginia salon owner who introduced fish pedicures start using them in the first place?
He said he wanted to come up with something unique while finding a replacement for pedicures that use razors to scrape off dead skin. The razors have fallen out of favor with state regulators because of concerns about whether they're sanitary.
Your friendly government- protecting you from smoke that no longer exists and fish threats that never existed. Up next, health care.