Cigarettes have always been noxious to me: As a kid, I stole my grandpa's Marlboros and hid them deep in a trash bin. In college, Chesterfields made the kisses of a woman I loved taste carcinogenic. When I lived in Spain, smoky air in my favorite bar made my lungs burn. And no law has spared me more irritation than California's trailblazing 1990s bans on indoor smoking. Yet I vehemently insist on the right of my fellow humans to smoke. Distaste for cigarettes is no reason to cede bedrock liberties to the state. The sweeping ban on smoking that the U.K. Parliament passed earlier this week, which will permanently prohibit the sale of tobacco products to anyone born in 2009 or thereafter, flagrantly violates the natural human right to bodily autonomy. And its illiberal logic portends more paternalism to come. Proponents of the bill, which is expected to become law once it gets approved by King Charles III, seem to have good intentions: By gradually increasing the age limit for smoking...
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