You don’t want to breathe pollution- move to another country.:rolleyes:
No. You do not have the right to make people breathe your smoke. that includes the waiters, barmaids and bouncers. Is that sinking in? Your addiction does not trump other peoples health. Can you follow that?
Still waiting for anti-smokers to give up cars and furnaces so I can breathe easier…
Smokers are a desperate group. Attempting to cloak poisoning other people as a right they are entitled to is amazing.
Do I feel badly because your right to inflict smoking damage on others is being ended. Hell no. I feel sorry for kids who have to grow up with the smoke in their face and lungs.
Gonzomax, answer me this (and keep in mind I’m not a smoker)…
Why should my right, as a business owner, be curtailed to cater to a clientele that smokes, be infringed? Screw their rights, think of mine.
I open a bar, a bar specifically catering to drinking, smoking and picking up people of the opposite sex for crazy, wild, no strings attached sex – a college bar, more or less. On the front door I’ve stated as much quite clearly (well, maybe not the sex part…).
So, why should my income be lessened (with people going outside, they’ll drink less, order less food, spill fewer drinks, which means order even less drinks, etc), because you don’t like smoke?
If you don’t like smoke, GTFO out of my bar, go next door.
You do realize that we do have laws and regulations trying to limit that amount the pollution from cars and furnaces, right? And you can figure out the cost to the economy that an outright ban on internal combustion engines would be versus the cost of ban on smoking in public? If eliminating the pollution we get from cars was as cheap and easy as eliminating the pollution from smoking, we’d have done it decades ago.
This is a silly refusal to engage the basic debate. Of course I do, if they choose to be in close proximity. Anyone bound and gagged and dragged into the bar of course has a stronger argument. You getting this? I’m not trying to be contentious here. The point is not that smokers get to smoke wherever they want. They don’t and they shouldn’t. But they get to smoke where the owner decides it’s OK, and anyone who doesn’t like that circumstances shouldn’t go to such a place. Places where people have no reasonable alternative should by and large not allow smoking–hospitals, subway cars, public libraries.
You and others find it axiomatic that non-smokers’ rights to not breathe smoke is inviolable. I largely agree with that. But that is NOT the same as saying you get to demand that every place in the world be smoke-free, just in case you drop by. In some instances–bars, for example–your ability to avoid smoke is still sacrosanct, but here you may need to avoid the offensive situation by not going into any place where the owner caters to a smoking clientele.
Most reasonable people get that a guy going to work, standing on a subway platform, has the right to demand no one smoke. He’s trying to get to work, for Pete’s sake, and he may not have practical alternatives. A bar? Sorry. You shouldn’t get to decide how evey bar in the world operates just because that’s the way you’d like 'em. You don’t like smoke-filled bars? Don’t go into them. The owner gets to decide his bar’s policy on such matters, you get to decide if you’ll go and give him any money.
Don’t care. Your pollution is killing me, and I’d thank you to stop it. I don’t want it limited, I want it stopped. Because I want it that way. My rights to clean air trump everything else.
God, but being ridiculously self-righteous is fun!
I’m not a nicotine user, yet I support their right to courteously light up - I think many smokers can and do limit their use, how many chain smokers still exist? A few but at $5 a pack- most smokers I know ration their smokes to last.
Seeing a band at the newly smoke free Intersection Lounge? I don’t know, may seem too sterile and sober…
I have trouble understanding the opposition to the regulation of the exposure of employees to unnecessary and easily removed workplace hazards. However, I believe that most people supporting such bans are more concerned about themselves than about the poor restaurant staff. If the concern were about others, I’d expect to see things like smoking in a car or home with a child made illegal. Children have even less control of their exposure than do adult employees.
If a bar, club or “room” wants smoking, why do you need to be in it? Is your state so poor that there is only one bar every 30 miles or so? Someone grabbed a handgun and forced you to have your beer only in places that allowed smoking? The simple matter is that smoking is an issue because we want it to be one; those of us who have thrown cigarettes away or never took them up in the first place. And we’ll find a way to “inflict the harm” of diabetes and bad eating on ourselves as well just so we can fight that. It’s just the way things work.
Anti’s are an even more desperate group; using the same tired rhetoric to hide their lack of common sense no matter what the subject. Inflicting their bitterness/poison on the rest of us who realize everyone is (and should be) different. Guns, smokes, pot, or real butter on my popcorn - its all the same to them. I feel sad for children raised for no other purpose than to be against someone/something just for the joy of running the world around in circles.
We have a tendency to envision cities when we picture America. That is incomplete. There are lots of small towns with one or 2 restaurants and bars. There are tiny little towns where residents have to drive 50 miles to go to a decent restaurant. The idea that if you don’t want to suck cigarette smoke into your lungs just work somewhere else is a crappy response. That option does not exist for everybody.
If you eat badly, and get diabetes, you do not give it to bystanders. You do not cause others to get sick. You are not forcing waitresses and bar tenders to adopt your life style. But smoking is different.
What if it is a small town shithole bar that is owner-operated? No employees are there to have to breath in the smoke. Would there be a good argument against banning smoking there?
Not true, Many restaurants along the Lake Michigan coast in the tourist towns have been non-smoking for years. Also several places in Grand Rapids. Not to mention some chain restaurants have non-smoking policies as well.
There are also places that have the smoking and non-smoking sections in different rooms, separated by a wall. The Pump House in St. Joseph and Clementines in South Haven are two that spring to mind.
Many smaller business don’t allow smoking simply because the owner doesn’t want to pay extra to have the proper ventilation installed or pay for higher insurance rates.
Gonzo, I’m still waiting.
That’s uh, an interesting viewpoint you have. I’m in the Detroit area and I know many, many, many, many (etc.) nonsmoking restaurants.
Speaking as a gigging musician, playing smoke-free bars fucking sucks. People start out watching your set, then start drinking, then start wanting a cigarette. So they go outside, continue drinking and smoking, and all their friends go out to hang with them. And they never come back in. You end up playing to an empty (but smoke-free. Awesome. :rolleyes:) bar.
I’ve seen it happen a hundred times.
[hijack]Since this has been repeated more than once in this thread, I gotta respond to it. Nobody gets diabetes from eating badly. You can’t give yourself diabetes.
Yes, if you have a genetic predisposition for becoming a Type 2 diabetic, becoming overweight is going to exacerbate the condition. Being overweight exacerbates a LOT of conditions, including heart disease, gall bladder problems, etc. But there’s plenty of overweight people who don’t have Type 2 diabetes. And there’s plenty of thin, healthy people who exercise regularly who do have Type 2 diabetes.
And Type 1 is a totally different beast altogether - your pancreas just pooped out, it has nothing at all to do with eating habits.
[/hijack]
From the link in the OP