A case for discounting the backlash against the ban on smoking in public places. The case of Romania

Abstract

Earlier this year, the Romanian Parliament has introduced a law banning smoking in public places. The law was received with a wide set of reactions, stirring a broad debate on the legitimacy of state’s intervention, smokers’ decisional autonomy and the effects on businesses. In this context, this paper will import behavioral law analysis on hedonic adaptation in order to argue that the backlash caused by the new Romanian law prohibiting smoking in public places will likely decrease as time passes by and should thus be discounted by legislators pressured to retract the law. After presenting the context, content and societal effects of the law (Part 1), it will introduce the concept of hedonic adaptation as a behavioral concept, as well as some of its applications in real life (Part 2). This phenomenon will be then studied in the context of the newly introduced legislative change, aiming to identify factors that would increase the likelihood of hedonic adaptation to occur in this particular case (Part 3). Lastly, the paper will look at the effects of acknowledging the occurrence of this phenomenon on the course of the legislative process, as well as on the society in itself, highlighting the need to back up the theoretical enquiry produced by this paper with some empirical data (Part 4). It will be concluded that the same patterns observed by researchers in the studies aimed at observing the phenomenon of hedonic adaptation can be applied in this case, and potentially in any other involving a significant change of law.