(FORTUNE Magazine) – New York City, always a leader in unsound public policy, has done it again. It has created this enormously dumb law about smoking. People in public places here in Gotham -- in restaurants, corporate offices, elevators, museums, race tracks, barber shops, and you name it -- may no longer light up except in various minutely specified situations. Equally otiose, we would say, is the FAA regulation that went into effect the other day barring all smoking on flights of less than two hours. The cause we are plumping for, you will possibly be surprised to hear, is not smokers' rights but laissez faire. We wish smoking to be regulated by market forces, not by politicians. Rules about smoking in the private sector can be made much more efficiently in the selfsame sector. Profit-seeking airlines, restaurant owners, and corporate managers have powerful incentives to maximize the number of contented customers and workers; furthermore, they have more detailed knowledge of the varied human preferences they will run into than does, say, the New York City Council. Some private sectorites will no doubt opt for hard-line antismoking postures (as Northwest Airlines has already done); others will cater to smokers (still a fourth of the country, after all). But there is absolutely no reason for government to be regulating smoking in the present writer's office. Incidentally, he does not smoke. All he cares about is sound public policy.