I smoke AND I completely agree with **Lightnin’**s entire post.
I’m a nonsmoker and I disagree with Lightnin’s entire post.
Not a bit of it - it’s about how they’re impinging on property owner’s rights.
You’ve got no right to insist I provide you with a smoke-free environment.
What, you mean on private property I can do as the owner pleases? Sounds precisely like what anti-ban types are after, to me. So, am I allowed to invite people in to my house to have a smoke? Am I allowed to serve them drinks while I’m at it? What if I want to sell them drinks? What if I don’t particularly want you there, thankyouverymuch - am I still obliged to cater for your sensibilities? At what point does your “right” to come on to my property trump my right to run my property as I see fit?
Then take your lungs to somewhere where they won’t be affronted. There’s lots (and lots and lots) of them around, y’know, and given the apparently overwhelming need for smoke-free bars, I’m sure there’s a veritable killing to be made running one. Don’t let us stop you.
Somehow, I think maybe you’re more concerned about your ability to smoke wherever you want than you are with the property owner’s rights.
I don’t have any right to demand that you not fill MY lungs with smoke? So if I’m just a’swingin’ my fists around, and you happen to get hit because I did it near you, it’s not my fault? Gotcha.
Do you have a license to have people come over to your house for drinks? One provided by the state? No? Then feel free.
I remember, back in the seventies, there wasn’t a single place you could go where you WOULDN’T be affronted by smokers. Things seem to be improving, in my opinion.
Again- when you smoke, you force everyone AROUND you to smoke. Don’t you think this is a bit rude?
Not if you’re in an establishment that allows, even encourages smoking (at my bar we sell cigarettes and cigars).
Somehow, I think you’ve missed the two times I pointed out that I neither smoke, nor have any desire to whatsoever. It’s gross and I wish people would stop it. But I feel the same way about listening to Dido CDs, and no-one’s campaigning to ban them.
Oh, so because the state sees fit to regulate liquor sales, that makes it fine to make arbitrary decisions about how else I run my property? Pardon me, but that doesn’t really follow, I’m afraid. Run it by me again; what does my having a licence to serve liquor have to do with what rules I set in my own property? I’m pretty sure it doesn’t say on liquor licences that I must provide an environment amenable to absolutely every bugger that comes along. I could run the Exceedingly Spiky Seat Bar For People With Explosive Haemorrhoids for all the state cares. This is a complete irrelevance. Do I, or do I not, have the right to decide what guests in my own home/establishment are allowed to do? And since Terrazzo didn’t answer earlier, I’ll ask you this - should people with maids/cleaners/au pairs be allowed to smoke in their own homes?
Definitely, although how this speaks in favour of a ban is beyond me, since it occurred quite naturally, without the government forcing everyone to make the same choice. My ideal world is one where most establishments are non-smoking, not by legislation but because that’s what people want, and are provided with. I would still like there to be places where smokers can go and enjoy themselves (and I would like to offer a pre-emptive “fuck off” to any wanker who comes and says “outside” at this point), and I see no reason whatsoever why the two shouldn’t exist side by side. There is no reason why it is necessary to ban all smoking for there to exist non-smoking establishments, as proven by the numerous non-smoking establishments that already exist. My favourite pub when I lived in Cambridge had a no smoking, no mobile phones policy, and by god it was ace. But I really don’t see the need for the government to make this the status quo.
Yes, unless you’ve gone somewhere where there is plainly going to be lots of smoking going on, in which case, no. I think having sex on the train is pretty rude, but I don’t think I’d have cause to take offense if I went to an Amsterdam sex show. I think calling people an arsehole is rude too, but there’s no law against that, nor should there be. On the other hand, if someone calls me an arsehole in my own house/bar/whatever, I reserve the right to kick them right out. Seems reasonable to me.
I smoke off and on and I agree and disagree with Lightnin’s entire post.
Actually, I’m a non-smoker who, like Lord Ashtar (is anyone else confused that the Lord of both Ash and Tar is a non-smoker?), disagrees with Lightnin’s entire post.
If we’re both in a restaurant, and the owner doesn’t throw your crazy ass out, I’m leaving. If I stick around and order some chicken fingers, then I can’t really complain about getting socked in the mouth while I’m eating. The owner knowingly lets you stick around because that’s his business. Additionally, if I choose to work at said restaurant and get hit everyday, I’m gonna go work somewhere else.
Somehow, I think maybe you’re more concerned about being annoyed than the risks of secondhand smoke. Smoking is unpopular because it’s annoying. If second-hand smoke didn’t pose any danger to anyone but was twice as stinky, people would still hate it, they just wouldn’t have a leg to stand on when debating.
I hate it when other people talk in restaurants. When they speak, their sound waves enter MY ears. When I hear other people talk, my blood pressure rises and over 40 or 50 years of hearing people talk, I could develop hypertension. What’s more reasonable, I avoid restaurants that don’t cater to my auditory and health needs, or the government bans speaking in restaurants so that I can eat in peace and quiet? Hell, they have quiet and non-quiet sections, but you can hear the noise on my side too.
And if we could get past this Prohibition-era bullshit the state wouldn’t even be involved. Oh, but that will never happen because it’s a cash cow for them.
You are free to go wherever you want, but you don’t go to McDonald’s and complain because you can’t get a steak. If they want to allow smoking you have the right to go somewhere else. To me, that’s the bottom line.
I wouldn’t have a thing against smoking if smokers didn’t force me to “enjoy” their cigarette with them while they smoke. THAT’S my reason for being all for banning smoking in public places- if smoking only affected the smoker, I’d be against the ban, as well.
Why is it that smokers insist on the right to make me smoke with them? Oh, sure, I could just not go anywhere where there might be smoking… but on the other hand, why can’t smokers just enjoy their smokes in the privacy of their own homes, where they won’t affect anyone else? The very nature of smoking is that it’s intrusive.
I am an ex-smoker of 10+ years now. I do appreciate the ability to enjoy my meal without it tasting like an ashtray. However, I fully expect the bar to have a smokey pool table or game area. I would not seek to have it different. What burns my ass (pun intended) is this “Go outside and smoke”. First, this is Florida. It’s 100 friggin’ degrees outside. Additionally, the “Smokers Ghetto” is downstairs, across the lobby, down the sidewalk, around the back or side of the building in the direct sun or rain! It takes 5-8 minutes to get there and the same to get back. Once there, the pager would go off requiring my presence back where I just came from! The second class citizens are in the direct sun while the cars are under an overhang in the shade. I could accomplish work while smoking for the 3-4 minutes it took to have a cigerette but now it took twenty minutes to travel, smoke and return. I think the Smoking-Nazis are often as described; on a modern-day witch hunt with all the zeal of the religious extremist they speak against so fervently.
On the other side now. Smokers, WTF. Why is it when one smoker lights up five more fire up also. It wasn’t so bad in a office with one but six in an average sized room? Jeez! I can’t see my way to the freakin’ door. I think much of the backlash against smokers comes from the small number of smokers who REALLY abuse the ability to smoke in “mixed company”.
I don’t allow smoking in our home or in our vehicles because, well frankly, it smells like shit. If smokers could be smoke-free for a month and see what it smells like to the rest of us I think there might be a little more self-governing of when and where. Non-smokers: if you want them to always go “somewhere else” then require a decent “somewhere else” to go. The current ghettos are truely unfair and unfeeling.
Lightnin’, I really don’t get what your beef is here. There are many many many many many public places you can already go where you won’t be subjected to breating in second hand smoke. Here is a list of some that I’ve been to recently where smokers were told to take it outside:
[ol]
[li]Barnes & Noble[/li][li]Gold’s Gym[/li][li]Chipotle[/li][li]the local mall[/li][li]a Japanese restaurant[/li][li]a used book store[/li][li]Taco Bell[/li][li]Jiffy Lube waiting room[/li][li]grocery store[/li][li]Petco[/li][li]Metro station[/li][li]my office[/li][/ol]
In fact, the only time I’ve been somewhere smokey was my part time job at the bar, and I knew full well when I took the job there that people were going to be blowing smoke in my face. Would you be surprised if I told you that when I go to visit friends who smoke that most of them go outside with it? In fact, the last time I can remember smoking inside someone’s house was at a buddy’s party in New Jersey a few years ago.
If you decide you want to go somewhere to overpay for alcohol that doesn’t allow smoking, I’m sure you can find a few. Surely they exist. If you can’t find one it’s because you aren’t looking hard enough. In the meantime, you haven’t really provided any evidence that smokers are constantly “forcing you to enjoy” their cigarette with them. You’ve just been complaining this whole time that they are recklessly taking years off your life by lighting up a Marlboro in the same building as you.
Why is it unreasonable for there to be some public places and private establishments where people can go to drink a beer, eat a steak, and smoke a fine cigar indoors? And don’t give me the “They’re my lungs!” thing again. Give me a good reason why nobody should be allowed to smoke inside ever again anywhere.
Horseshit. Absolute, unequivocal horseshit. Nobody forces you to smell the smoke in the building you work in, do they? Does anyone force you to enjoy some nicotine when you’re sitting in a theater? How about while shopping for groceries or electronics or music? Hell, how about any concert held indoors. For fuck’s sake I can’t enjoy a heater with sitting at a Packer’s game. In a fucking outdoor stadium! Know why? Because of pricks like you. But it’s ok to load up on the booze before driving home. Talk about harming others’ health. Where do you stop in your crusade against risk? Life is a risk. It seems more likely you’ll die in a car crash than second-hand smoke. Time to ban the automobile.
The crux of this whole thread was to point out the gummint telling private businesses what they can and can’t do concerning a legal product.
If a guy wants to risk his life’s savings to open a bar or restaurant, who the fuck are you to tell him what is and isn’t allowed as long as it’s legal? Don’t want to go to a bar that allows smoking. Go the fuck somewhere else. What kind of shithole are you living in that allows smoking anywhere and everywhere? The way you sound it’s impossible to avoid it. That proves you’re arguing from a purely emotional standpoint and complete lack of reason.
Here’s an idea. If you think smoking is so pervasive as to not allow anyone a moment’s peace from smoke, open a fucking restaurant or bar for them. You’ll make a killing! (heh) When I go to a restaurant I prefer to sit in the NS section, but I certainly won’t demand nobody else smokes. I understand the need of society to have a sliver of give and take. And bars? BARS!?! Fine, enjoy the smoke-free atmosphere while downing booze. Then get in the car and drive home. Certainly there’s no risk to anyone’s health there. Want to bring up stats? How about drunk driving fatalities every year? See, that’s where this is headed. Get the public to turn against anything that can be harmful so it’s that much easier to later ban other things people have a problem with. Well, not people. Groups of vocal pissers and a public that is too wrapped up in anything that doesn’t directly affect them.
I keep wondering how our parents and grandparents ever made it past 50 with the culture they lived in. Doctors smoking in their offices, teachers smoking at their desks during classes, etc. Hell, until recently you could smoke in a frigging hospital. How did mankind ever make it this far?
I occasionally smoke, and when I do, I try to be polite as possible about it, because my right to smoke ends when it interferes with your right not to passively smoke.
That should go for employees of a business as well, so I’m all for public smoking bans. If I want one that bad, I’ll go outside. If I want my after dinner coffee with it, they make these neat things called to-go cups. If I want to sit, I frequent an establishment with a nice bench outside, or maybe even one with outside tables that I can smoke at while I eat!
The only place I don’t get why they’d ban smoking is bars, and because of that, I know that some smoking bans are limited to businesses that make less than 75% (or some other percentage) of their profits from alcohol sales. At least, that’s how it was in Dallas when they passed the ban there.
:dubious:
Could you be more specific as to where these places are?
Part of the confusion in this thread is that the crux of the OP is that the gomment should NOT be able to dictate what a private business owner does (concerning a legal product) on their own property in their own business. This thread is not about the rights of smokers, or the rights of non-smokers.
Everytime a thread like this starts it gets derailed by all fervent ‘smokers rights’ nuts whether you’re for or against. This should really be about ‘property owners’ rights.
This thread should be about the governments role in the lives of private citizens who own businesses and whether or not the government should be able to tell these businesses that they CAN’T allow smokers to smoke in their own building if the owners so chose to allow it.
Once that has been established you can then pit the smoker who blows smoke in your face inside the private business in which the owner chooses to allow smokers to smoke. You will then look like an ass.
Oh, and the whole point about “non-skilled workers not having a choice about where to work…” You are correct.
You are unskilled, you dont have a choice. Deal with the smoke that comes with the job, you chose to be unskilled, you chose to apply for employment at this place.
“so the whole industry that employs them has to go non-smoking…”
Bullshit.
The ‘right’ of a person to not breathe second hand smoke in a private business stops at the front door. You chose to engage in this activity when you inquired for employment here. If the public overwhelmingly sought smoke free nightlife, then the market demand would be there and the choices would be there. As it stands, people want to go to places where they can drink, smoke, dance, and scream without having outside influences on their behavior.
What some of you people want to do is mandate ‘smoke free’, ‘all the time’, ‘everywhere’.
Is that really want you want the government doing?
I am certainly not going to accept such evidence at face value, not when it may be used to impeed my rights.
If memory serves, the original EPA report stated that second-hand smoke results in 3000 deaths per year. I have no idea whether those 3000 deaths are from smoke in the workplace, as opposed to those that live full time with smokers, but I’d guess that it consists of more home smoke than work smoke. Even so, that adds up to 0.001% of the population. Not what I would call statistically significant. And that number was from a study done in the 70s, when you could still smoke on elevators, for fuck sake. These days, you can’t smoke anywhere, and yet that 1970s statistic is bandied about as if it’s still relevant.
No, I’m not going to take P&T’s word as if it’s medical gospel, but I’m not taking the EPA’s word for it, either. I’d rather think for myself, thankyouverymuch.
Exactly the same argument about the rights of businesses and property owners has been made to defend ethnic discrimination. it didn’t wash then either. If one’s business poses a health hazard to customers and employees, it does no good ethically or legally to harp on the rights of the property owner. Such businesses can and are being regulated.
It is also familiar to hear people say (of employees in businesses where there’s lots of secondhand smoke) that “well, they can work somewhere else.” That used to be said as justification for permitting hazards in the workplace in a variety of industries. Pretty damn callous.
To tdn: I assume you missed the links I posted previously relating to research on the effect of secondhand smoke in heightening risk of sudden infant death syndrome, and its impact on cardiovascular disease (described as being about as bad for passive as for active smokers). Those studies are just a small sampling of all the research that’s been done since the 70s. If you are interested in updating your knowledge, go to the NIH’s Pub Med site and you can look up scads of papers (Google under Pub Med).
Actually, I read 4 of the 5 you posted.
I’m not saying that second-hand smoke is harmless. Obviously it’s not. But I think its overall threat to society is being blown way out of proportion. If I’m smoking outside and away from all people, and someone walks by and says “Put that out! You’re killing me!” (and yes, it has happened), that’s not science. That’s hysteria.
Back when I used to smoke, a lady drove by in her car with the windows rolled up, feigning coughing and waving her hand around in front of her face like she was trying to get rid of all the smoke while giving me this really dirty look.