I’m all for restaurant and workplace smoking bans, but not smoking in bars seems a little ridiculous. Bars should be able to have designated smoking areas. You’re there to kill brain cells anyway, why not go the full monty?
I wish I could institute a smoking ban outside our apartment. Until recently I was convinced I was hallucinating the smell of cigarettes in our apartment every now and then. Turns out our neighbor comes outside to smoke sometimes and it blows in under our door! I didn’t notice as much until I was pregnant. How do you politely tell your neighbor to stop stinking up the outdoors?
[Eddie Izzard] No smoking in bars in California, and pretty soon no drinking and no talking! [/Izzard]
I’m fine with banning it in restaurants. I’ll go outside. However, if you want me to stop littering, put a fucking ashtray outside. If you want me to stay more than three feet from the door, put the effing ashtray more than three feet from the door. And…
… please get over yourself. One whiff twice a day isn’t going to kill you, believe it or not. It isn’t even going to make you smell bad. The sky isn’t falling, promise.
I’m generally in favor of smoking bans. I agree that 150 feet from an entrance is too much, and whoever came up with that distance had no adequate knowledge of how close buildings and their entrances are. But, like many have said before me, I used to hate being dragged out by my friends to go to a smoke-filled bar. I would stink when I got back and had to shower or else the smell would then get onto my sheets, would would then need a washing the next day. Sure, I could have avoided the whole problem by not going out, and that’s what I did most of the time. But if it’s a friends’ birthday, and he decides he wants to celebrate it at XYZ bar, then yeah, I’ll go with them to buy him a few rounds.
Now that bars don’t allow smoking, I’ve found I can enjoy going out. I was reminded the other weekend of how much I really didn’t like it when I was visiting a friend in S. Carolina, and we went into N. Carolina to go bar hopping.
Smokers like to say that non-smokers can “vote with their feet” by not going to bars that allow smoking…well, most of us did! That’s why, despite the crying to the contrary, a lot of establishments saw an increase in business when the laws were enacted. And why can’t it be the other way around? Why don’t all the smokers vote with their feet and not go to places that don’t allow smoking, to try to get the bans lifted? I think it’s because it’s a lot less of a hassle for them to step outside for five minutes to have a smoke than it is for us to be in a smoke-filled bar for two hours.
I live in Ohio. That wiki page says that smoking is banned in all restaurants and bars in OH and yet every time I go to a restaurant, I’m asked, “Smoking or Non?”
Is it just reflex that people still ask this? I didn’t even know about the ban. Maybe I need to get out more. Or maybe that page is not accurate?
We moved to California back in 2004, but every time we go back to Missouri to visit with friends/family it still surprises me how much my clothes smell like cigarette smoke at the end of the day. I absolutely love being able to go to restaurants and bars (and especially bowling alleys) in CA, without having to worry about that.
Uh… because then we wouldn’t be able to go anywhere.
There were plenty of restaurants pre-ban that didn’t allow smoking or only allowed it on outdoor patio thingies. There are no restaurants post-ban that allow smoking, because they can’t.
It’s banned outside as well in our town. No smoking pretty much anywhere downtown. It’s banned on all city/public property, the parks, the transit mall, and around all of the businesses downtown. Our favorite bar downtown has outside seating where smoking was allowed until the new law went into effect a couple of years ago.
I’m not really a smoker so it doesn’t make a difference to me one way or another. My husband just quit and I only smoked every now and then when he did.
MadCity’s original smoking ban dates back to the 1970s when smoking was banned in retail stores, other than tobacco stores. I can’t count the number of times while shopping with my mother that when she smelled tobacco smoke in a store, she went up to the store manager and demanded the manager tell the offender to stop or leave, or she would call the police and file a complaint against the store.
She never lost a case.
The Alger Bar & Grill has a really good breakfast/brunch buffet on Sundays, so the idea isn’t unheard of.
It’s always funny how smokers call non-smokers whiny crybabies, yet when anyone dares mention that cigarettes don’t smell as pleasant as pixie dust, they start acting like some poor, oppressed minority.
Western culture is to the point that no person should ever be smell-able unless you’re hugging them. I feel no need to accommodate those who haven’t caught up yet.
Oooh, okay, a bar and grill. See, I was picturing an wet t-shirt omelet bar and sausage oil wrestling. 
That wikipedia chart is amazing. The idea that it would be clearer to make a chart using the additive property of light is mind-boggling.
North Carolina state government bans smoking or tobacco use in all of its state government buildings. The smokers hang just outside the security doors and prop them ajar, thereby filling the nearby corridors and offices with their stench when the wind is our way. I used to work in an NC city office building that allowed and still allows smoking. My office was just down the hall from the field crew assembly room where the crews met at the end of the workday and 90% of them lit up. I’ve never smoked and I left there as soon as my age and time in service allowed. I now have COPD thank them very cough much.
In my Washington town, I haven’t seen much enforcement of the “within 25 feet” thing. It’s common sense, really. When you’ve got a row of businesses lining a street, the only way to stand 25 feet away from an entrance without being within 25 feet of a different business’s entrance is to stand in the middle of the street. And I think the people that drafted our law knew that when they wrote it. Either that, or they were dense enough to think that every bar and restaurant is in a free-standing building surrounded by parking lot.
That being said, I’ll have to admit that the smoking ban really doesn’t seem to have had much of an negative impact on bar & restaurant business around here. Then again, my town is in almost the exact geographic center of the state - it might be a different story in border towns.
I wrote a blog post when the law was passed, though, because I felt sorry for one of my customers at the bar/restaurant where I cooked at the time. He was a 100-year-old man who would come in once a week. He’d order a small side of biscuits & gravy, and when he finished eating he’d bum a single cigarette off the bartender and smoke it while he waited for his cab to pick him up and take him back home. That was his “getting out” for the week, and the law pretty much took that away from him. A centenarian shouldn’t have to stand outside in sub-freezing winter weather to enjoy one of his few remaining pleasures in life.
I’m in Michigan. I’m normally a diehard small-government type, but I really wish my state would ban smoking in bars and restaurants. I’m sick and tired of smelling like I just survived a house fire after going out to eat.
I’ve noticed an increasing number of restaurants proclaiming themselves to be non-smoking establishments, but all the big chain restaurants still allow smoking.
When I went back to Michigan a couple of weeks ago, I went out with one of my friends. I had a hard time eating because everything tasted like smoke to me. Thus, the bad habit of other people was effecting me.
I love that Arizona has a smoking ban in bars and restaurants. Beer tastes better, food tastes better, and I don’t need to take the drunken shower to get rid of the stench before I go to bed!
You don’t have to go all the way to California. Come on up to the UP. There’s no law, but most places around me voluntarily went non-smoking a couple years ago. It’s really nice - virtually none of the bars/restaurants I frequent allow smoking, and from talking with the owners, it’s worked in their favor.
Of course, you need to put up with the snow and us Yoopers, but those are pluses, right?
I mostly agree with smoking bans, but if you live in a city with air pollution, it’s a bit silly to declaim about air purity in bars being a factor. I’m in favor of public area bans, but private businesses should be allowed to do as they please. Going to a bar is a luxury and many times I’ve decided not to go to bars because of the stupid drunks being obnoxious. It would seem silly to ban drinking in bars due to the disruption in my fun caused by other drunks. On top of that, hanging out in a bar will make you smell like stale alcohol, so the stench argument works there too.
>If it’s your place, you don’t want smoking? Fair. It’s YOUR place. Elsewhere FUCK OFF.
Does it not occur to you ever-so-healthy-and-pure-shitheads-puritans that there may be more to these laws than the well-being of people shoved outside to feed their monkey? Think control. The Prohibitionists and Drug Warriors claim to be doing good too.
This is conveys a sense of annoyance, of resentment, maybe even anger. Or is that reading too much into it?
The bit about Prohibitionists and Drug Warriors is a mite confusing - do they stop people from drinking and taking pills, or do they stop them from pouring booze and pills into other people’s mouths? I thought it was only the first one.