Unintended consequences of the smoking ban

Any government intervention in the market can give us cause to consider the Law of Unintended Consequences where a policy decision or action leads to fresh actions which might not have been considered by those putting a policy in place. Some of these knock-on effects can be positive, a windfall that enhances the impact of the original decision. Others can be negative leading to fears of government failure and a deepening of an existing problem or market failure. The smoking ban seems to be providing a rich seam of examples of such unintended blow-back effects.

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