All this talk about being “forced to smoke” or being “forced to breath/smell/ingest/whatever” is bullshit. There are plenty of places that are now smoke free, thanks to our nanny government and “those who know what is best”. There are plenty of places the “anti’s” can go, and not be bothered by “foul emissions”. So now what? It isn’t enough. It will never be enough, ever.
I’ve now asked 2 Dopers to provide examples of being forced to smoke. Neither one has answered me.
Smoking is not limited to race or gender, if you know what I mean.
Also, employers use ‘other’ means to weed out potential employees, they just can’t say what the ‘real’ reasons are if they happen to be discriminating, but it does happen, - all the time. I personally think that an employer (smaller businesses) should have some leeway in discriminating potential employees.
Such; You wouldn’t want a nerdy white guy working at a biker bar. Or a fat guy waiting tables at Hooters. Their should be some allowance for discrimination if the employer needs to fill a niche role in the company. You wouldn’t want a fat bald guy <Hey, I heard that> as the spokesman for your company, when a slightly less qualified, but beautiful, woman has also applied.
True, but the majority of the people also happen to think that these other hazards should not be permitted. The same, so far, cannot be said for smoking.
Smoking is the one (potential) hazard that the majority of people seem to want to allow to remain in the private realm. The same cannot be said for asbestos, lead, arsenic, etc.
The silence is indeed deafening.
The prohibition law, written for weaklings and derelicts, has divided the nation, like Gaul, into three parts – wets, drys, and hypocrites – Florence Sabin
Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and who were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind. – Henry Grady Weaver
Political correctness is the natural continuum from the party line. What we are seeing once again is a self-appointed group of vigilantes imposing their views on others. – Doris Lessing
But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you – the social reformers – see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them. - Isaiah Berlin
Well, honestly, what did you expect?
Smokers spent a long time being inconsiderate and arrogant. I can’t name the number of times I’ve been trapped in a car, or on a plane, or in a restaurant, or in a ballpark, or waiting in line, or in an airport, or any of those other places where one iota of common sense would suggest to any smoker on the planet that maybe, just maybe, their smoke might interfere with someone else’s enjoyment or sense of well-being.
Payback isn’t called a bitch for nothing.
Ok. If I want to go dancing, I will be around smokers.
I can go to the university’s dance group, but that meets one night a week for a limited number of hours. And they only serve water. In a cafeteria. Should I want a place with more ambience, a real dj, a more varied group of people, and a good gin and tonic, I go to one of the area bars.
And duffer, knock it off with the alcohol/ smoking thing. A person need not protest every social ill imaginable in the Pit. You have not found any meaningful hypocrisy when someone complains about the presence of smokers but not of drinkers. If you applied that standard to yourself, this thread would also need to attack the PATRIOT Act.
Are you serious with this argument? So it’s all about getting even? Man, that’s just pathetic.
OK, that’s a good example, but that’s just one example.
Yes, it would be nice if there was a smoke-free dance club. I’m a little surprised that there’s not. But perhaps some club owners toyed with the idea and decided that it would drive people away.
How often do you go? Is it every night?
I’m not making an argument. I am explaining a situation. Smokers brought this backlash on themselves.
As I said in a previous post to this thread, I am against laws forcing businesses to go smoke free. But that’s because I’m for the businesses being free. If every business in the world decided to go smoke free, and every public space in the world were designated non-smoking because the people who owned it wanted it so, I’d be delighted, not only because I don’t like being in smoke, but because of the behavior of smokers all these years.
More and more American cities are instituting smoking bans affecting private businesses. Very few of these laws, to my knowledge, have been reversed. As noted previously, voters in my middle-sized city not only passed an anti-smoking ordinance by a substantial majority, but recently beat back an attempt by bar owners to exempt their businesses (by the same wide margin).
From USA Today 6/10:
“Last week’s launch of a nationwide ban in restaurants, bars and cafes brings (Sweden) in line with Ireland, Italy, Malta and neighboring Norway. More than a dozen other countries, including France and Germany, have instituted partial restrictions against lighting up in public; Belgium and the United Kingdom plan to curb smoking in enclosed public spaces, as well.”
The majority tide has turned against tolerance of secondhand smoke, and with the numbers of smokers decreasing, these views will become even more solidly entrenched.
With regard to jsgoddess’s remark about payback, I don’t think she or the vast majority of others who’ve had to tolerate smoky environments in the past are solely motivated by a desire for revenge.
But after years of being subjected to toxic smoke in public without recourse, there is a certain enjoyment for us now in seeing smokers wail about their “rights” being infringed.*
*Ponder this one, though - in surrounding communities where there is no smoking ban, restaurants generally have smoking and non-smoking sections (in theory, anyway, as there is no filtration system and smoke spreads into non-smoking areas). Maybe one-third of adults around here smoke, yet 50% of the seating is set aside for smokers, and non-smokers frequently have to wait if they want a table in the non-smoking section. I have yet to see any smokers protesting this infringement of non-smokers’ rights.
Out here in California, every place imaginable is smoke free. Stores, bars, retaurants, all places of employment, ballparks, planes, trains, parks, beaches, it’s all going (or already gone) smoke free. Even so, it isn’t enough for the “anti’s”. These restrictions are in place and should make you happy, but are they enough? Somehow I don’t know that they are or ever will be. Payback is not the way to make law.
So what behavior is this? Can you describe it? Are all smokers guilty of this behavior?
You mentioned airplanes. Should no smokers have lit up (how grammatically incorrect is that?) in the designated smoking section? Or how about airports? What sorts of bad behaviors are you decrying that took place in the designated smoking rooms?
Or are you talking about the few smokers who lit up outside of these areas? Are you willing to punish all smokers because of these few transgressors?
Again, I’m not for the laws. I am for businesses deciding for themselves.
I do cheer each time one of them goes no-smoking, and I completely understand why the antis have such vitriol.
Here in podunk Ohio, there’s still a lot of smoking. Most restaurants have smoking sections, for example. McDonald’s doesn’t. Woo. I guess I can get a burger and some fries.
It’s possible that you find smoke free restaurants in Lansing because of the Ingham County ban on smoking in public and private worksites.
I didn’t bother to dig farther, but I know there’s a whole passel of smoking bans in effect in the Lansing\East Lansing area. I lived in EL for many years (wish I still did,) and I remember when the first smoking ban was passed in 1989. Apparently it allowed restuarants to apply for an exception, and virtually all of them did, but the fact remains that Lansing is hardly an example of a place where smoking bans don’t exist.
I’m a non-smoker, I oppose most smoking bans on general principal. I don’t like unnecessary regulations imposed by well-meaning, but frequently misguided legislators. That said, I was recently asked to sign a petition to put an initiative on the ballot for Washington State allowing the public at large to vote on a smoking ban, and I chose to sign it. If the public at large is in favor of it, they have a right to implement laws saying so.
The “ban” that has been getting to me lately is the rules against smoking in hotel rooms. It used to be that you could smoke in any room. Then hotels had special smoking and non-smoking rooms. This was fine except that the non-smoking rooms were always filled. Now entire hotels are non-smoking in every room, and if evidenc is found that you smoked, you’ll get charged a $200 cleaning fee.
My fear is that soon apartment buildings and housing tracts are going to follow suit.
So if a bar owner wants to permit smoking, non-smokers should suck it up and deal, but if a hotel owner wants to forbid it, that’s unfair?
I didn’t say it was unfair. I just don’t like it.
Denver doesn’t have a ban, but I guess that at least 50% of restaurants are smoke-free. Those that aren’t are usually just as much a bar as a restaurant.
Are you sure? While the city of Denver itself may not have one on the books, there may be a county ban, individual outlying districts might have a ban, a neighorhood or business association might ban… you get the point. I don’t know if the city of Lansing has a ban, but the county does, and the city of East Lansing has several laws regulating smoking in public areas.
A bit of a hijack, but germane to the conversation: As with any law, smoking laws carry a question of enforcement and penalty. Whose job is it to make sure businesses aren’t permitting smoking? Logically it could be the health or fire departments, but it depends on how the law is written. For example, the health department can’t cite you for parking illegally, that isn’t in their jurisdiction. If smoking laws are written such that only police are allowed to enforce them, I suspect most police departments won’t bother unless there’s a specific complaint made. If the penalty to a bar is a $50 fine per day, I bet most bars would choose to pay the fine and allow smoking.
While legislators may create laws to satisfy the non-smoking crowd, unless those laws are enforced with realistic penalties, they are just so much smoke.
Yes.
Some cities in Colorado do have such a ban; the City and County of Denver does not, nor do most of its suburbs. There was actually a fairly reasonable state wide ban in the state legislature this year: it would have exempted businesses with more than a certain percentage of income from alcohol. That wasn’t good enough for the anti-smokers, and it failed. It’s interesting to note that even the most zealous of anti-smokers won’t take on gamblers - casinos and bingo parlors would have been exempted even in their version.