So it’s been a month since the voters (including me) passed the smoking ban, and less than a week since the smokers (including me) have had to go take a walk around the block or go huddle in an alley when we want to indulge. Big fucking deal.
From the simpering histrionics I’ve been hearing over the past few weeks, though, you’d think the American Cancer Society was rounding us up in cattle cars.
“It’s a civil rights issue!” they say. “I’m an adult, I can make my own choices, and where does anybody get off trying to tell me how to live my life??? It’s like NAZI RUSSIA!!!1~ WAAAAAAAA! :cough: :cough:”
BULLSHIT.
Two years ago, many of you fuckers voted for a state consitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, and civil unions, and granting anything having the appearance of a benefit of marriage to same-sex partners.
So it’s not just that gays can’t get married and can’t sign their civil union cards or whatever - if a private agency receives any state funding at all, they’re not allowed to offer health insurance to the domestic partners of their employees. The multi-thousand-dollar power-of-attorney-cum-inheritance business-type contract arrangements that some G/L couples have set up to give their partners minimal rights in lieu of any spousal priveledges are being questioned.
This directly affects at least half a dozen couples that I know, a few of whom have been together twice as long as my wife and I. You fucking bigots voted to deny them their most basic civil rights.
And now you’re complaining about the jack-booted thugs making you walk an extra twenty feet to light up?
Fuuuuuck YOU.
I hope you all have gay children who end up working for the Health Department. You fucking hypocrites.
Good call. And I’d like to extend the hippocrite label to those who are fighting for their “right” to trans-fat (like the Constitution was written up in Crisco on a slab of bacon) but refuse to recognize the right for everyone to marry whomever they want.
Well, for what it’s worth, as a gay marriage supporting smoker who doesn’t live in Ohio (but does live in Massachusetts, which has had a smoking ban for a couple of years now), I wouldn’t call smoking a civil rights issue, but I would call it a *property * rights issue. Why not let whoever owns the building decide whether or not to allow smoking?
Good call. Why don’t we let the owners decide? I mean if the owner of the bar thinks that employees shouldn’t have to wash their hands after using the bathroom, why is the government telling them they have to? Really, if the restaurant owner doesn’t want to the expense of refrigerating the unprepared food, why should the government tell him he has to?
WHAT THE FUCK! Smokers have a blind spot when it comes to their own addiction. Second hand smoke is a nuisance and a health hazard. Neither patrons nor employees of a business should have to be forced into going elsewhere to avoid the pollution of others bad habits. There is no property rights issue. We as a society tell business owners how to run their operations all the time. We do it for the health and safety of the community. In this case, the community has said that enough is enough, if you want to smoke do it away from the public.
Oh, while we are at it: a big FUCK YOU to the tobacco companies. You fuckwits screwed yourselves. By running a TV campaign the clarified what the competing issues were on the Ohio ballot, you insured people voted for the total ban and not your ineffective partial ban. If you had kept your mouth shut, many more peole might have been confused and voted for your issue.
Hmm, I think you and I are using different definitions of the word “forced.” What I suggest is offering “options” which both smokers and non-smokers are free to take advantage of. If one bar allows smoking, and one doesn’t, neither of us is being “forced” to go to one or the other. We have the opportunity to make an informed decision as to where to spend our money.
I agree that we can have a legitimate debate about smoking and property rights, though I come down more on the public health side. What’s pissing me off is having to constantly listen shit like this sample letter from today’s Enquirer:
And you probably thought I was making up the NAZI RUSSIA bit.
All I know is, they’re banning it in Nevada. NEVADA. As in, LAS VEGAS. You can’t enjoy a smoke in Sin City. Unless you’re at the slot machines or the gaming tables. But not at the bar. Not in the restaurant. How can they take that away?
Except there are no options. The number of non-smoking bars was always extremely low…
Screw it. I was going to debate you on the lack of real options, or the fact that non-smoking sections never protected non-smokers, or the fact that bars are nearly 100% smoking establishments were allowed by law. But that is all bullshit and not the issue. As I said before, smokers have a blind spot in this issue. Second hand smoke has real health effects, and the smell is disgusting. If I opened a bar and allowed people to piss in your in face, I would be shut down in about 3.2 seconds. But, you believe that is acceptable to discharge your pollutants on others, sorry that just does not fly.
The thing is, this was the case for the majority of the twentieth century. How many non-smoking bars were there? None that I recall. People felt that non-smokers should just suck it up (literally) and deal with it.
I have no objection to people enjoying tobacco. I don’t understand it, but your body, etc., etc. However, it all comes down to the fact that smoking it forces others to deal with the smoke, and we shouldn’t have to. Especially not as a condition of employment. A property owner may well want smokers in his establishment, but then all of his / her employees must be exposed to smoke for 20-40 hours a week.
I don’t have a good solution. I wish there was one. I don’t think banning the practice everywhere is morally justified; it makes my life a heck of a lot pleasanter, but I don’t think it’s right. Could everyone just learn to chew? Spitoons aren’t very attractive, but even cleaning them doesn’t harm a nonsmoker.
How is it that every smoker is a respectful smoker, and yet I have spent my life getting snootfuls of smoke and seeing tons of filters hither and yon? Do smokers actually believe that they are considerate, or is this just one of those things they claim to try to deflect the anger?
Same reason we don’t let property owners decide whether or not to have fire exits, or make their places handicapped-accessible, or line the walls with asbestos, or grease the floor around the edges of the pit where they throw the rusty knives?
Before the California statewide ban was passed, the city of Los Angeles enacted one. Oh how the bar and restaurant owners whined about how they were going to lose business to people who were going to go outside the city limits to places that allowed smoking. Fact is, business went up. For the most part, the smokers went to their favorite places anyway (much easier granted when there isn’t freezing weather and a foot of snow on the ground) and the non-smokers came out in droves.
The California laws were passed as an occupational safety issue. Business owners can’t expose their employees to asbestos or polonium or second hand smoke. The patrons have nothing to do with it.
A coal mine has to be made as safe as possible. A bar has to be made as safe as possible. Fire fighting has to be made as safe as possible. All of these professions have different levels of what is “possible.”
Okay, then please explain to me why the public safety is better served by eliminating smoking than it is by collecting car keys and administering breathalyzers before returning them.
I’m just saying, people who insist that ALL SMOKING MUST BE DONE IN SHAMEFUL EXILE might have a bit of a blind spot.
Again, employee safety isn’t the same thing as “public safety.”
I’ve mentioned on here before that at my workplace we are required to insist that all employees wear earplugs. They don’t want to, but they absolutely must in order to work for us. If we could have gotten rid of the noise, we would have. Since we can’t, we must enforce wearing a piece of safety equipment for their protection.
In a bar or restaurant, they can get rid of the hazard (smoke) instead of requiring the protective equipment. Since the hazard can be eliminated, it should be. Other hazards can’t be eliminated, so they must be worked around somehow.
