by W. Kip Viscusi

About the author: W. Kip Viscusi is the George G. Allen Professor of Economics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

The regulation of public smoking has become an increasingly prominent policy issue. Many public and private institutions have instituted policies to restrict public smoking. Some have banned public smoking altogether. At a governmental level, the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) has proposed banning all public smoking in the workplace, except for smoking in lounges that meet highly restrictive requirements. Recently the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) also issued a report in support of legislation banning all public smoking.

The debate over taxing cigarettes has intensified as well. Advocates of higher cigarette taxes cite the health care costs inflicted by smokers on the rest of society. In 1994, for...