I think the main problem is that the American consumer has reached a point where they are too lazy to weild their power. This a broad generalization and based solely on my personal observation.
I see it constantly, where people will shop somewhere even if they disagree with that establisments policy or customer service or atmosphere. Rather than simply go without their good or services, it is easier to just ignore those things. As such, such places feel no need to change anything.
In the example of smoking in bars, if all of the people who didn’t like it would simply NOT go to bars that allowed it, I garantee that non-smoking bars would open up. Then both parties could be happy.
Instead, people feel the need to simply pass more and more laws that remove more and more freedoms. And don’t give me that “it’s for the employees”. They can work somewhere else. And I am sure there are enough smoker wait staff and bartenders that would be happy to work there.
And, as for the “the government regulates other stuff” argument, much of that I disagree with as well. Aside from regulating things that the consumer can’t know (such as whether food is healthy), I think the givermnet should keep it’s hand to itself. If some arse wants to open a company that won’t hire minorities, good for them. I simply won’t buy anything from them. Sure enough, a company that DOES hire minorities will open and I can deal with them.
But this is America, land of people who love giving their freedom over to the goverment.
I used to waitress in a restaurant where there was smoking. All 5 of the cooks smoked while cooking and I can’t tell you how many times i personaly saw the ashes fall off the cigarette and plop into the food being cooked. They’d just mix it in and get on with it.
I used to waitress in a restaurant where there was smoking. All 5 of the cooks smoked while cooking and I can’t tell you how many times i personaly saw the ashes fall off the cigarette and plop into the food being cooking. They’d just mix it in and get on with it.
I’m a New Yorker in a rather ironic position: the only place I encounter a lot of smoking is at concerts. Smoking has decreased at the recent shows I’ve attended, but seeing as how marijuana has always been illegal during my concert-going tenture and people still smoke THAT, I guess it’ll never be enforced fully. I won’t quit going to concerts, but I find smelling like smoke afterwards and having trouble breathing (sometimes for a couple of days - I wonder if I’m allergic) annoying in the extreme.
Of course, walking down a street in New York is now kind of like strapping an ashtray to your face since everyone is smoking outdoors. But I’m willing to cut some slack here - the waitresses and staff at bars are there for the money and shouldn’t have to live with the ill effects, in my opinion.
How exactly would that work? Non-smokers all stop going to bars; the bar owners notice that business is dropping off, and that all their customers are smokers. They then logically conclude that the way to stay in business is to encourage smoking. And you think non-smoking bars would then open up?
I don’t see it as “removing a freedom”. I see it as gaining the freedom to go out without choking on smoke and having my clothes stink when I get home. Laws are not intrinsically evil. For example, do you consider civil rights legislation to be “removing” rights?
And your “they can work somewhere else” argument has already been addressed. It’s tantamount to saying that construction workers don’t need to be provided with hard hats because they can “work somewhere else”. Workers are protected against hazards in this country; we don’t tell people “if you don’t like it - there’s the highway”.
Personally, I find this an untenable position. To subscribe to such a philosophy, one would have had to have opposed the abolition of slavery, to use one extreme example. You could argue that people would be free to not buy anything from the plantations that used slaves, but that didn’t happen, did it?
It may very well be how you feel, but that’s not how we do things here.
No, it’s not. There’s a fundametal difference: wearing a hard hat does not change the inherent nature of the service being offered or the product being purchased. If a bar wants to cater to smokers, you can’t prohibit smoking there without denying a owner the right to cater to a specific clientele engaging in an otherwise legal activity. The very thought of such an establishment existing, apparently, is just too distasteful for some people. Every establishment, everywhere, must conform to some people’s specifications.
If you want your analogy to work, it would be if a construction worker on skyscrapers pointed out that it’s dangerous to work so high up in the air. Certainly the company should provide as safe an environment as possible. But not up to the point where only one-story buildings can be built. If the construction worker has a problem working above a certain height, he’s in the wrong line of work. You don’t want to work in a place that permits smoking? Don’t. Work somewhere else.
I have a couple things which haven’t been discussed to add.
Some personal information to put the arguments into context. I don’t smoke, nor am I opposed to it. My father and my brother (who is also asthmatic), however, are both severely allergic to cigarette smoke, and another of my brothers is just as allergic to marijuana smoke. Prolonged exposure to the appropriate type of smoke results in a hospital trip where the ER tries to get their throats to open back up and their lungs working again so they don’t die. That said, consider the following.
Most places with ventilation systems to separate the room into smoking and non-smoking spaces just don’t work. I can’t count the number of times my family and I have had to move to a different table farther from the smoking section or just plain leave the restaurant because of the level of smoke in the non-smoking section. What is worse is in some places I have to walk through the smoking section to get to the non-smoking section.
Next, lets be really clear about the nature of a club/bar/restaurant. All of these are public places, even if they require a membership fee or a cover charge. If the business is run by the government it is considered a government facility not a public one. So complaining that the government is interfering with a private business is fallacious. Besides, as has been mentioned, the government regulates this kind of thing all the time.
Lucky Chaarms
Your concert analogy is flawed on more than one point. The principle is your comparison of an occasional hit to the head by a passing crowd surfer and smoking. The occasional hit can be avoided isn’t fatal, cigarette smoke can be fatal and cannot be avoided in a closed space. As has been lightly discussed with the asthmatic discussion, there can be serious consequences to smoke inhalation. Second, your are incorrect about your asserted right to hit me based simply on my attendance at one of these concerts. There have been numerous cases (no cite provided here but you could find on easily enough) where lawsuits have been filed (and won) by people beat up during concerts. Mostly however, no easy identification is possible and no serious damage is done so it is forgotten.
grienspace
You have this backwards – you aren’t expected to accommodate the marked. This kind of legislation is directly damaging to businesses since they have to provide for your physical safety by spending more money. The business is expected to accommodate the EPA and OSHA which are the governmental agencies primarily responsible for providing a healthy and safe workplace. Think of this as them catching up with the rest of current practices.
Bob Cos
Back at you – if a ban on smoking exists, smoke somewhere else. Remember, you don’t get to make that kind of demand either.
** El Elvis Rojo**
The right to “life, liberty, and happiness” protects people who are unhappy having been exposed to cigarette smoke too. This broad statement can’t justify or give a person the right to smoke. Sorry.
All that having been said, I am for a limited form of a ban where certain smoking only places are exempt. It seems to be a happy medium.
And what would be the product being purchased in a bar? Here’s a clue: It’s a liquid; it comes in a glass or a bottle; and it’s NOT a cigarette.
If there’s a law against it, then it’s not a legal activity, is it? It’s only legal to the extent that it’s not illegal. To call something an “otherwise legal activity” is disengenous. It’s legal to take a shit in a bathroom, but if I walk into a restaurant and shit on your table while you’re eating, am I engaging in an “otherwise legal activity”?
Just like to mention that I don’t hang in Bezerkly, but I went to school in San Francisco and partied there a lot. I know they’ve got very similar laws. And you could count on a group of smokers right outside of the door to bar.
There may be a law against it, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen.
I remember right after the ban, you could still find bars that allowed smoking inside. Then they started to get “raided” and had to stop.
I haven’t been to a bar in years, but I’m about to de-wagon mysekf.
Anyway, a lot of the college crowd {students and teachers) smoke, so I wouldn’t doubt what you say.
But the cops are supposed to lay off pot smokers, not tobacco.
**OK, this isn’t that difficult. The product being purchased in any establishment where one actually consumes the goods is not just the drink, and any reasonable person knows it. It’s the room, it’s the service, it’s the overall accommodations. It’s the songs on the jukebox, it’s the pool tables, it’s the pinball machines. It’s all the things that the owners thinks will make his target clientele happy, while still giving him a profit. So, if I want to open a public place that caters to a drinker who wants to light up a Marlboro, why does anyone get to demand that I cannot? Oh, I know! Because all these alleged victims get to make demands of these sorts. I forgot. Every place, everywhere, must be an establishment that’s just the way they want it. The very existence of a public establishment that caters to a consumer that is not them, ought to be illegal.
Disingenuous? Do you have a dictionary handy, friend? You might want to look up the word and see how it applies to your analogy here.
It’s not legal to shit in a public place, out in the open. Not anywhere that I’m aware of. This would not be an “otherwise legal activity.” However, the act of smoking is illegal in bars, not because it is illegal in all other public places, but because someone has defined it as such.
Here’s the difference: pool tables, jukeboxes, and pinball machines don’t fill the air with deadly toxins. Despite what you think, one has no absolute right to operate a business that caters to people engaging in a dangerous and extremely annoying habit. I can’t open a bar where people can fire handguns inside, because there’s a law against it. Not even if I say, “well, if you don’t like it you can go somewhere else”. And not even if I really, really, want to. The government tells you where and when you can do certain things all the time - usually things that affect other people. They are not curtailing your rights, they are PROTECTING THE RIGHTS OF OTHERS. I’m sure you’re happy as a clam when the government disallows something that you don’t like people doing around you. But if it’s something you want to do, all of a sudden it’s no fair.
What about camping?
Huh? What makes a thing illegal in the first place? SOMEONE DEFINED IT AS SUCH. The government could ban cigarettes altogether, period, but most reasonable people remember Prohibition and realize that it’s not going to be successful. The fact that the government stops short of a total ban, and still allows you to smoke at home and outdoors does not mean that you have an absolute right to smoke cigarettes. There are designated places where you are allowed to build a campfire. That doesn’t mean you have an absolute right to build campfires. You can’t build a campfire in the middle of a crowded subway station.
**Yes, I understand you are asserting this idiotic position; you needn’t repeat it. I get it. If I want to build a new bar on a currently vacant lot, specifically because I want to cater to smokers, to build a comfortable haven for these people, I should not be permitted. Keep it a vacant lot. Because all places must, must, must be the type you want to be in at all times. That’s how America should work.
**Yes, and when the government says, no, you cannot open a bar where smokers can willingly congregate, not anywhere, anytime, under any circumstances, I believe that is an undue intrusion. I do not believe anyone has the right to have every place in the fucking world be designed to meet his exacting standards, period, no exceptions, particularly when there was nothing preventing anyone from going to establishments where smoking was not permitted. I’m funny that way.
**No, when the government passes a law saying that all bars, everywhere, must allow smoking, then you’ll have a legitimate complaint. That would place those who wish to be in a smoke-free environment in an unfair situation. Allowing individual bars to make that decision does not. If there’s such a demand for non-smoking places, I’m sure those establishments would sprout like mushrooms in response to the demand.
**Sure, are ya? I don’t want to do it at all. I don’t smoke. Don’t assume.
**IANAL, but I believe that even while camping, one cannot drop trou wherever one pleases, without regard to who may be in the vicinity.
**Okay, at this point I’ll assume you are being deliberately obtuse because of the weakness of your argument. This is really not that difficult a concept. I want to permit people to own public establishments that allow willing adult participants to engage in an activity that is otherwise legal (feel free to twitch again over the word “otherwise”; the rest of the world understands perfectly well what the point is). You believe this is analogous to building a campfire on a subway platform. Your rhetorical skills are just too much for me. :rolleyes:
Ah, yes. You have convinced me with your inescapable logic. You used a disparaging word to describe my argument. Well, I guess you win the debate, then.:rolleyes:
Next in our Top 40 of logical fallacies: The Strawman. Blowero isn’t opposed to smoke-free bars; therefore he is in favor of vacant lots and wants everything to be exactly the way he wants all the time. Sure Bob, that’s exactly what I said…
Oh, you mean like smokers who can already annoy us and endanger our health on every street corner, patio, or doorway, and can puff away at home or in their cars to their heart’s content, but just have a fucking hissy fit when anyone suggests they not be allowed to annoy us in bars and restaurants as well? I agree, I don’t think smokers should have the right to insist that every place in the world meet their exacting standards.
You’re the one who’s complaining. I like the smoke-free bars the way they are.
That’s simply not true. Smokers are a minority, yet in places where no regulation exists, there are very few non-smoking bars or restaurants. Your belief that they would “sprout like mushrooms” is simply an unfounded assertion.
Sorry my argument went over your head. Were my argument “weak”, you would be able to refute it, which you clearly can not. I don’t believe I am the one being obtuse here.
I’ll say it again; our duly-elected local governments can and do regulate what people can do in places open to the public. It happens all the time, and it is neither a violation of anyone’s rights, nor is it any kind of moral outrage, despite your obvious anger at the concept. You want bars where people can smoke; I want bars where people don’t have to breathe smoke. You can keep getting blue in the face and spewing invective and sarcasm, but the fact remains that your position enjoys no moral superiority over mine.
Look, I apologize for the invective. But I can’t keep offering the same point over and over again and having you refuse to actually engage it.
Here’s my point in a nutshell: there was NOTHING preventing you and I both from having individual bars with the conditions we wanted prior to the government interfering with the process. The fact that you have the right to a smoke-free environment simply does not lead us to conclude that every environment MUST be smoke-free.
If the city where you lived allowed “smoking” bars but only in certain sections of the city–the smoking ghetto, let’s call it–would you be opposed to that? Non-smokers then wouldn’t mistakenly stumble into one of these dens of vile behavior. What do you suppose would happen as a result?
No, I don’t think I would be opposed to that. But you seem to think that just because people could open non-smoking bars & restaurants, that they automatically will do so. As I already pointed out, it has been my experience that if it’s just left up to this magical “free-market” that so many smokers tout, non-smokers get left high and dry. I can remember what it was like before California’s law. If you wanted to go out to eat or drink, you just had to resign yourself to breathing other people’s smoke. There were few, if any, alternatives. And I can’t remember any places that successfully kept the smoke out of the “non-smoking” section, when restaurants had both. Besides which, some clown would invariably light up in the non-smoking section anyway.
I think what the pro-smoking camp keeps throwing out is a strawman - this idea that we are choosing a total ban over some made-up utopia where non-smoking bars and restaurants just pop up like daisies because people want them. You are saying that we are refusing to let the smokers have “a few bars in the ghetto” out of sheer spite. That’s a made-up position. No such choice exists. The REAL choice is between how it used to be, where virtually every establishment allowed smoking, and how it is now, where smoking is not allowed. And you are also leaving out the fact that people are allowed to smoke as much as they please; all they have to do is step outside or be seated in an outdoor patio.
And by the way, smoking bars still exist in California. I inadvertently ended up in one a few months ago when I went in with friends. And no, I did not call the Health Dept. out of spite. I just won’t go to that place again.
One thing I (and a lot of other smokers) learned post-ban in California is that taking it outside when you need a smoke really isn’t that big a deal.
Peace,
mangeorge
And the flip side of that is that just because the government passes a law does not automatically mean they are evil.
Look, the argument was made that government should not tell businesses what to do. I merely refuted that argument. I did not say “all regulations are sensible or right”, so please don’t attribute strawman positions to me. Some regulations are sensible; therefore regulations are not bad per se.
Well I find the “I have a right to smoke” and the “gummint can’t tell us what to do” tack tiresome. When people stop asserting that they have an absolute legal right to smoke wherever they want, I will stop questioning them as to where this alleged right exists.
Smoking does harm others.
That’s pretty ironic. Others have posited that non-smoking bars will sprout up like “mushrooms” if the “free market” is allowed to take its course, in spite of the fact that such a thing has never happened anywhere that I am aware of, and you accume ME of making “unquestioned assumptions”.
If the “free market” takes care of everything, why do we need laws to mandate handicapped access to businesses? Why did we have to force the South to end segregation?
The only assumption being made in this thread is that people will automatically do the right thing if they are just left to their own devices. It’s simply not true.
That’s a strawman. I don’t necessarily think it’s the role of government to protect people from themselves. This isn’t about that; this is about protecting other people.
There’s also a false dichotomy being presented here, which you didn’t explictly state, but which you implied. The dichotomy is that non-smokers are being given a choice between “a few bars where smokers can go”, and “a total ban”, and are refusing to allow smokers their “few bars” in favor of the “total ban”.
A more realistic scenario is that smokers want to be able to smoke in any bar, and don’t want to allow non-smokers to be able to go out anywhere without having to breathe smoke. They are putting out the disingenous argument that they want to just leave it up to the owners, knowing full well that no bar owner is going to mess with the status quo, and will continue to allow smoking even with the knowledge that the majority of people in the country do not smoke.
