All I have to say is " YAY!"
I’m happy this went through (finally), but apparently I live in an enlightened town, because just about all restaurants are already smoke-free. I do know there’s some bars that aren’t, but they tend to be for the college crowd and I wouldn’t go there regardless of the smoking.
Seems like even those are few & far between. Everyplace that’s opened up in the past, say, 10 years has been smoke-free from the get go.
All I can say is Hail Michigan! Being #38 hardly makes us the leaders, but we’re still the best. Never again will I have a meal ruined by cigarette smoke that wafts in from the smoking zone two tables away.
Take your “rights” argument and shove it. You don’t have the right to pollute the air that I breathe. I don’t pee in your water, don’t you smoke in my air.
I still think it’s business rights. If a restaurant/bar/club/etc wants to allow people to smoke, that should be there choice. Let the individual business owners decide. Customers would have the ability to choose based on numerous criteria, ability to smoke in the business is one of them. What is wrong with letting the market decide?
I think that allowing businesses the choice to allow smoking, let’s say after 10pm, would be doable. Municipalities have laws about when you can consume alcohol in a bar, they could have certain set aside smoking times.
The people that are for these total bans, what are you afraid of if it was left up to the business? Some businesses would, some wouldn’t and it would be your choice if you wanted to patronize/work there. If people want to go/work to a smoky bar why shouldn’t they have the choice.
Full disclosure, I’m a non-smoker, lives in Illinois (they just passed a total ban maybe 2 years ago). Since the ban I find myself going to bars less often. Part of the bar culture is smoking, drinking and flirting. It just doesn’t feel the same anymore. Coming home and throwing your clothes in the laundry is part of the cost of doing business.
I’m a non-smoker and I HATE cigarette smoke.
However…
…nails my opinion.
Very well-stated, Bricker.
I think you overestimate the mobility of the work force. A lot of people that work in restaurants do so because they can’t find anything better. They may have a choice between not working at all and inhaling second hand smoke. Smokers are free to smoke and pollute their own air in private. Your right to smoke ends where my nose begins.
Exactly. I celebrate businesses choosing to be smoke-free. I celebrate choice, generally.
BigT, smokers don’t take advantage of the patch, or choose snuff instead, because they enjoy smoking. Really. I know that it’s hard for a non-smoker to fathom it, the same way I can’t fathom enjoying Paulie Shore movies, but someone clearly does.
Work at a bar, but not that bar.
I would advocate a Get Smart cone of silence. If you choose to or have to because you are addicted, a tube should enclose all the smoke in a tight area around you. You breathe it , not the waiters or other patrons. If smoke is not a problem, then you should not mind.
When you leave they would have to vent it into the air.
In the Villages in Florida the bowling allies are smoke free. That is so pleasant.
Will this be the staw that finally makes the people in the UP revolt and form the state of Superior? 
You’re right. You don’t have the right to pollute the air that I breathe. So stop driving. Turn off the furnace in your house.
If you don’t like smoking, don’t eat at a place that allows smoking. If you’re concerned about your exposure, don’t take a job at a place that allows smoking. This is not rocket science, people. But instead it’s an all or nothing proposition, when it never had to be that way.
Again, you act as if everyone has a choice in employment. You’re a single mom with two kids trying to make ends meet and the only job you can get is waitressing in a smelly diner. You can choose to work there or not work at all, in many cases.
I’m not going to limit my choice of dining establishments because some of you think you have a right to smoke there. Take your smoking elsewhere. YOU have the problem, YOU deal with it. Not me.
That was not an option. There were no restaurants in Michigan offering no smoking. A no smoking area has always been a joke. They would have to seal off a room. That, I would support.
No restaurants? None at all? In 2009?
That is absolute malarkey.
As a matter of fact, you have the problem. You were the person with the interest in a ban. By definition that means that it’s your problem, not mine.
So, have you stopped driving yet? Turned off your furnace?
There have been a couple that tried. They failed. Too many people addicted.
You need to drive. If you live in the North you need heat. You do not need to smoke.
I don’t smoke. I don’t like smoking, and I don’t like being around smokers.
I also don’t support a complete smoking ban, because it’s an unreasonable invasion into the way individuals run private businesses.
If you live in the North, yes you need heat (I can attest to as much). Yes, you also need to eat. But no, you don’t need to eat out. Eating out isn’t a right, and smoking isn’t a right. Neither ‘trumps’ the other.
In the face of such overwhelming logic as “but it’s icky and I don’t want it around me!” I have only one response, eat elsewhere. Eventually restaurants will get the message and become non-smoking, if there’s enough demand. If not, then the only purpose of the law is to impose the will of the active/vocal minority on the general public.
Bull.
You need neither heat nor a car. Scads of people demonstrate that every single year. So stop polluting my air.
What are you talking about? Most bars & restaurants in my area of da UP have been no smoking for years now. Every new place that’s opened in the past 5 years has opened as non smoking. And if that’s the case in the UP, then I know it’s gotta be the case in the more populated areas as well, though as a rule, I stay away from troll country 
Nope, we don’t like smoking any more than anyone else.
Really, most places other than the really lowest class dives are no smoking. Even the newest college bar is no smoking. We didn’t need a law to make it that way, either.
Now, as you get into the really rural places in the UP, yes, they have smoking. But anyplace that caters to tourism at all is going to have non-smoking bars & restaurants.
It’s not a smoker’s versus non-smoker’s rights debate, much as everyone would like it to be. It’s an owner’s rights issue. You don’t have the right to make the world accommodate your preferences. You don’t like a certain restaurant for any reason at all–they permit smoking, the music is too loud, the service stinks, you don’t like the decor–don’t go there. The answer to the question, “why should I have to breath your smoke in a restaurant?” is easily answered. You don’t.
Repeating ad infinitum, “I hate smoking, why should I have to deal with your bad habit?” just demonstrates a refusal to engage the real debate.
Da UP is Canada. When we talk Michigan ,we talk Detroit, Ann Arbor,up to Lansing. The rest is virgin forest and indians.