Fresh on the heels of Illinois’ proposed smoking ban, the St. Louis Dispatch is pushing for similar measures in Missouri.

In a piece that should’ve been in the Op-ed section, Kevin McDermott lays out the case for the government–both state and federal–to mandate what type of customers a private establishment can and can’t accept.

The news story, if it must be called one, is not only contradictory (in one section McDermott lends doubt to the theory that the smoking ban will harm bar and tavern business; then, a few sentences later, casually mentions a bar that was forced to close after smoking bans were implemented) but it also gives far too much credit to Illinois economic predictions. These predictions, forecasted by unnamed “state revenue experts,” could easliy be dismissed as fiscal voodoo since the smoking ban hasn’t become law in Illinois yet.

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