Dan Casey is The Roanoke Times' metro columnist.

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Dan Casey

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The good thing about pro-restaurant-smoking activists is they have abandoned the ludicrous argument that secondhand smoke is benign.

The bad thing is, these activists now assert a couple of equally absurd "rights."

These curious arguments found their way to my inbox and my voice mail this week after Sunday's column about the origins of Virginia's recently enacted no-smoking-in-restaurants law, which takes effect Dec. 1.

First in with a response was Charlie Prouty of Southwest Roanoke County.

He writes: "Everyone knows tobacco products are harmful to the user and those near them. However this issue is not about tobacco, it's about individual rights. If people object to smoking don't go to that establishment ... What's next -- will you come after our guns, motorcycles, autos, how about red meat?"

The one similarity between the "right" to smoke and "right" to ride a motorcycle is that neither is found anywhere in the U.S. Constitution. Such rights are fantasies, canards, talk-radio tomfoolery foisted on gullible listeners.

Even if such "rights" existed, they would not be unfettered. Thus, you have constitutional rights to free speech and to bear arms, but you have no right to shout "Fire!" in a crowded theater or to own an atom bomb.

For that reason, a motorcyclist would have no "right" to ride 50 mph down a sidewalk crowded with children. His "right," if it ever existed, would end at the point at which he was endangering those kids' health and lives.

It is the same deal with smoking in a restaurant, which is a licensed public accommodation. Smokers endanger the health of other patrons. And besides, they're smelly and irritating, too.

Next came an e-mail from a guy who calls himself "Brett in Vinton." His concern is different. He says it's a restaurant owner's right to decide whether or not to allow smoking.

This is similar to the argument voiced by state Del. Morgan Griffith, R-Salem, who incidentally voted against the restaurant smoking ban along with Dels. Onzlee Ware, D-Roanoke; William Fralin, R-Roanoke; Lacey Putney, I-Bedford; Jim Shuler, D-Blacksburg; Dave Nutter, R-Christiansburg; Charles Poindexter, R-Franklin County; Ben Cline, R-Rockbridge County; and Sen. Ralph Smith, R-Botetourt County.

"How in the world can it be Constitutional for any branch of the government to invite themselves into a private business and enforce their views?" Brett writes.

The answer is simple: The U.S. Constitution allows government to interfere in businesses in all kinds of ways.

A business cannot own slaves. A business cannot cheat customers. A chef cannot sprinkle arsenic and lead over the meatloaf he serves diners. There are constitutional laws regarding all of these. Ask any lawyer -- such as Morgan Griffith, Onzlee Ware or William Fralin.

Partly out of wisdom and partly out of fear for their own hides, members of the Virginia General Assembly have decided that neither restaurant patrons nor employees should have to breathe the arsenic and lead in secondhand smoke. Both of those and many other poisons are emitted by burning tobacco, according to the National Cancer Institute.

So smokers and smoking apologists: If you don't agree with the law, fine. Smoke all you want in your home, your car, outdoors.

But spare us the phony "rights" garbage. Lighten up.

Just don't light up around me.

Dan Casey's column runs on Tuesday, Thursday and Sunday.