The current controversy in Lebanon over the enforcement of the tobacco control law may well be an occasion for people to breathe some fresh air, away from the smoke of bombings at the border with Syria, mutual shelling in the streets of Tripoli, and tire-burning at the capital's entrances and the road to its international airport. To be sure, this is the kind of controversies that are a nuisance but are rather harmless, and was seen in many countries, including European ones, over the right of the state to forcibly impose a ban on smoking in public spaces, and most importantly, its ability to impose such a law on the citizenry. Naturally, only a minority of people has sound arguments with which it can defend its opposition to the smoking ban. For one thing, the harmful effects of smoking are no longer a secret to anyone, and there is no need for laws to warn people against these health risks. Hence, the opponents of the tobacco law, both in Lebanon and the other countries that have seen similar objections, are usually owners of restaurants, cafes and hospitality venues, where a smoking ban would impact the revenues of such businesses. For this reason, governments and restaurant owners in these countries made sure to allocate external open-air spaces for smokers to engage in “their habit", without posing a hazard to other people's health, and at the same time, without undermining the livelihoods of the owners of these venues. The importance of allocating such places in Lebanon is one notch higher, as the owners of hospitality venues have suffered greatly this summer because of the security and political mayhem that have afflicted all institutions in the country. Yet away from the details of how the smoking ban should be implemented, what is of paramount importance when enacting laws banning smoking in public places, like any other laws, is public interest first and foremost. If public interest trumps the interests of any particular segment of citizens, then public interest becomes the rule that the rest of society follows. So it remains for the government, any government, to impose the respect of public interest on all its citizens, and by all means. Naturally, it is not possible for policemen to prevent every citizen from smoking, or using their cell phones while driving – or ensuring they are wearing seatbelts. Both the state and society at large rely on civic feelings and collective responsibility in the enforcement of such laws, or what is commonly known as “respect for the law". The countries that have succeeded in enforcing the laws we speak of or similar ones in their societies did not have to erect checkpoints in front of restaurants, or summon the army from the border posts to pursue those who refuse to wear seatbelts. For one thing, citizens in these countries believe by default that it is their duty to respect the law. Going back to Lebanon, the difficulty in enforcing the tobacco control law lies exclusively in this point, that is, in the natural – if not instinctive – inclination among the Lebanese in general to break the law. Of course, their excuse is always ready, either because “there are more important matters", because “we want to live", or even because the state only dares bully the weak and those “who have no backing by powerful leaders or parties". What is even worse is the widespread bribery of police that could prevent them from enforcing the law. Here, I was struck by one fellow journalist on TV who defended claims about the difficulty of enforcing the smoking ban, and told a story about how he managed to bribe a policeman to avoid a traffic ticket, by paying him half the value of the fine he would have otherwise received. In a country and citizens like this, the law, any law, will inevitably end up on the shelf, after those who drafted it shy away from passing it, then those in charge of implementing it shy away from enforcing it. After that, everything in the country of cedars goes back to the state it was in.
