Ohio smokers: get a fucking grip

The BBQ Pit
101

Aw, geez.

No, it’s not clear at all. Why don’t you just argue your point instead of making up ridiculous positions and attributing them to me.

Would you like me to play your game? O.K., it’s obvious that you want to tie up children and force them to smoke cigarettes. Is that clear enough?

Of course the employees and customers at a cigar bar are o.k. with cigar smoke, because the ones who aren’t don’t go there and can’t work there. Rather circular reasoning, wouldn’t you say?

You could also say that all the customers and employees at a store that doesn’t offer wheelchair access are o.k. with not having wheelchair access. Does that mean the government shouldn’t be allowed to enact regulations regarding wheelchair access?

Why would you do that? Do you think I ever suggested that nobody likes to smoke? If you think my argument was that nobody wants to be able to smoke in a bar, then you must be delusional.

Another strawman. I made no such claim; I simply refuted smokers’ claims in this thread that this is a property rights issue. I’m happy with the status quo; you are the one complaining.

Yes, well in between killing babies and beating up grandmothers, I like to tie smokers to train tracks and twirl my moustache in an evil way. :stuck_out_tongue:

Doesn’t sound like it. You sound very opposed to them.

I wouldn’t be opposed to that. Or another way to go is what they do in California - we have an exception for smoke shops. So smokers can go to lounges in the smoke shops and puff away to their heart’s content. That doesn’t bother me in the least. It’s been several weeks since I went on a murderous rampage and shot up a smoke shop. :wink:

Sorry if I destroyed your strawman image of me. :smiley:

I haven’t dictated anything. Maybe you’re just an angry person.

102

Why? I’m perfectly happy with the status quo. You’re the one bitching; maybe you should vote out the legislators who are enacting these regulations if you don’t like them. Good luck.

Ha, ha - touche. I’m not angry at smokers, but I AM angry at Apos for calling me stupid, especially since his assessment was completely off. I think trading insults: stupid - asshole is pretty equitable, don’t you think?

103

In a word, yes. I did think it made some good points, but it was incomplete, as you made no analogy to the smoking ban in the context of driving a car, which is what the OP is b-----ing about

104

How Kosher!

105

Here’s the statement I responded to, little guy:

“What if all the bars allow smoking? How is that a choice?”

I quoted it, but I reproduced it here for you again.

Which is incredibly stupid. You DO have a choice. When no bars existed, you had the choice to build one and set whatever goofass rules you want. When I build a bar, and allow smoking, you are no better or worse off, unless of course you are some sort of envious tool. You can’t whine that I am restricting your choices. That’s complete and utter backasswards bullshit.

The problem is that you can’t defend your assertions, so you have to waffle around on other topics. Too bad.

106

I’m 47. I used to smoke full time. Up to two packs a day. I quit about 20 years ago, but will still enjoy an occasional cigar.

Forty years ago, just about everyone smoked, and have smoked less and less over the decades. Good. It’s bad for you. Though I’ll never believe that a tiny bit of second hand smoke is going to do you in. Say the smoke that you might smell when you go into a building while there is someone smoking outside.

Now, with that said, I’ll understand that folks are now a bit more sensitive to the smell of tobacco. That’s OK. I understand and am very considerate of where I might have a puff on a cigar.

What I don’t get is that there seems to be so many people that claim to have so many immediate health effects from even a tiny wiff of smoke from someone that may be smoking outside a building. Has our physiology changed that much in 40 years? I doubt it.

Where were the people that had these problems 30, 40 and 50 years ago. How could they have possibly dealt with the effects of nearly everyone around them smoking?

It’s fine if you hate it. It doesn’t bother me a bit. What I still wonder is how come humans can suddenly have such a strong physicalogical reaction to something that has been common practice for the last couple of hundred years.

How did the people that have such a problem with a little bit of smoke today, survive in the 60’s?

107

I don’t think it’s so far fetched, people build up a immunity to what they are exposed to. Now that smoking is restricted, one can go a very long time without being exposed, but when one does get exposed, the effects are very apparent.

108

What has changed is the increasing recognition that a variety of detrimental health effects, both immediate and long-term, occur due to exposure to secondhand smoke.

Among the immediate effects are those on airways and coronary blood vessels in the heart. Other important effects are built up through long-term exposure to secondhand smoke (i.e. chronic bronchitis and certain cancers).

Years ago, smoking was very common among adults, and there was little recognition of how bad it was for smokers, much less non-smokers. Times have changed. It used to be that horrific risks were taken by people working in many industries (coal mining, textile manufacture and so on). Workers once used a radium preparation to hand-paint watch dials so they’d glow in the dark. That was fine until they started dying from radiation poisoning. No one is saying secondhand smoke exposure is as bad for workers (and customers). But when one can readily control a risk without anything worse than inconvencing an increasing small minority of the population, why not do it?

109

That is absolutely the most idiotic argument I have ever heard in my life. Why don’t you build your own bar? duh, yup. Take you asinine Libertarian cliches and shove 'em up your ass.

110

Like most smokers (or ex-smokers), I think you over-estimate the number of smokers.

From the statistics I could find, smoking peaked* in 1960-61, when 54% of adult males smoked. Then in 1964, the Surgeon General first publicly reported that smoking causes cancer, and the smoking rate began dropping. By the end of the 1960’s, it was down around 40% for all adults (both men and women). It continued dropping about 1% per year thru the 1970’s, 80’s, and part of the 90’s, when the drop slowed down. Currently, I believe the adult smoking rate is between 18 and 19%.

While this was considerably higher than today, it’s quite a ways from “just about everybody smoked”.
In fact, I don’t think there was any time in the last 50-60 years when non-smoking adults didn’t outnumber the smokers.

  • Possibly smoking was higher in males during WWII & immediately afterwards, but I was unable to find statistics on that. They may not have been kept like we do today – public perception of the dangers of smoking was much less then.
111

Seeing as how they didn’t really have a choice (other than “building their own bar” :rolleyes: - see Apos’ retarded post above), perhaps people simply accepted the adverse health effects as something they couldn’t change.

There does seem to be evidence that second-hand smoke has determintal effects:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/10/10/health/webmd/main2078965.shtml

This is admittedly anecdotal, but I heard a story of a jazz musician who played in clubs almost every night where patrons smoked heavily. He was getting a physical, and his doctor told him his lungs “looked pretty good for a moderate smoker”. He said, “Doc, I don’t smoke.”

112

Hmmmm. I’m definitely thinking that maybe, after all, I am not the angry person here.

If there are so many people who want non-smoking bars, why aren’t there non-smoking bars? Wouldn’t that be a great business venture?

It’s not an idiotic argument. Generally speaking, if there is a significant demand for a product that is legal to provide, the market provides it. While it may not be practical for you to go out and set up a bar tomorrow (though I don’t really see why not), don’t you think someone would do this? Or even lots of people?

Hell, I don’t even have any great attachment to the market as an ideal, but even I think it can allocate resources pretty effectively in this kind of way. But that hasn’t happened, and so in an attempt to ensure you (and I am sure plenty of other people) can go to a bar without smoke being present, the “solution” has been the hammer of banning smoking in ALL bars.

113

I tried to answer this, at least partially, in post #26.

As i said, the fact is that smokers and non-smokers aren’t two discrete social groups. A Smoking bar and a Non-Smoking bar don’t cater to different markets in the same way that, for example, a Sports Bar and a Cocktail Bar do. Smokers and non-smokers often hang out in the same social groups, and if such a group wants to go out for a drink, someone is going to be inconvenienced—either the smokers will have to go outside to smoke, or the non-smokers will have to put up with breathing smoke.

In my experience, it has always been the non-smokers who accept that going to a bar involves breathing in other people’s smoke. I gave an example of a Sydney bar that went non-smoking, and had to halt the experiment for precisely that reason. It’s not that there weren’t enough non-smokers; it’s just that they would always go to a smoking bar in order to placate the smokers in their group.

Now, i hold us non-smokers to blame for this, in considerable measure. If we constitute the majority—and, in many social situations, we do—then we should be ready to tell our smoking friends that we’re not willing to breathe their noxious fumes, and that we are going to a non-smoking bar to drink tonight. The fact that we don’t do this is often related to issues of social harmony. Legislating non-smoking makes our social lives easier, because it allows us to get a smoke-free environment without needing to personally express our disgust for smoking to our friends.

Is this a good thing? I don’t know. As i said earlier, i’ve always been ambivalent about these smoking bans, and i’ve generally accepted that, if i go to a bar, i’ll have to put up with some smoke. My main support for the bans is based on an occupational health perspective, thinking about the employees.

The funny thing is, just about every smoker i know personally has no trouble with the bans. They all recognize the reasons for them, and accept that it makes good health policy. Maybe that has something to do with the politics of my friends, or maybe they’re just an unusual group; i don’t know.

One thing i know for certain: despite some ambivalence about the idea of the bans, i absolutely love being able to leave a bar after hours of drinking and not have my eyes burning and my clothes and hair stinking of smoke.

114

mhendo, I know, and actually agree with your analysis pretty much. lowbrass was the one trying to claim it is a ridiculous argument. The simple fact is, the market hasn’t provided non-smoking bars, which is an indication that the demand for them is not that strong, for multiple reasons.

On a personal level, if I am not going to be allowed to smoke a cigar in a bar (which applies to the overwhelming majority of bars where I live), I would rather it was non-smoking as well. I find cigarette smoke somewhat unpleasant. I just don’t think that is enough to justify a ban.

Health of workers, on the other hand, is a good argument (and notice that lowbrass crept towards the realization that it is a much better justification). That’s why I would support a dual system - just as in some jurisdictions here, a separate license is needed to sell hard liquor, making some bars beer and wine only, I see no problem with a separate license for tobacco smoking on the premises. Then there would be non-smoking bars, there would be places where barstaff who wished not to be exposed to smoke could work, and there would be places people could go to smoke while drinking as well. Seems like a better solution to me than an outright ban.

Even when a (cigarette) smoker while doing my Masters, I would sometimes go to the only non-smoking bar on campus. The point was it was almost always empty, and had a good quality pool table.

115

So some employers should be able to pay a little more in order to put their employees at risk? That doesn’t make sense to me.

116

I answered this already. Employers have always been allowed to do this - not all jobs carry the same risks. There are obviously limits on this, and I would support those limits, but I do not believe the extra risk a person places themselves in by working in a smoking environment justify overruling the wishes of the worker him or herself. This is particularly true if the person is a smoker themselves.

The workplace is not 100% safe. The argument exists about where the safety bar should be drawn. Generally speaking I am on the side of improving safety where possible. But I am also on the side of individual choice, and I see no benefit of telling a smoking bartender who wants to work in a smoking bar serving drinks to smoking customers that he or she isn’t allowed to do so. Of course, this requires a genuine choice to be available to bar staff, and it probably isn’t at the moment as there are very few non-smoking bar jobs available. Hence my compromise solution.

117

Not all jobs carry the same risks because some jobs cannot be made less risky. Where the job CAN be made less risky, the laws have for some time REQUIRED the job to be made less risky. Employers do not get to ignore a risk just because it’s their property.

So my workplace has to require that all employees wear hearing protection, even though the employees do not want to wear hearing protection, even though they may be damaging their hearing off the job, even though they might already have damaged hearing, even though the hearing protection is a hassle, even though they are at work, they are required to wear the hearing protection and we are required to
force them.

If we do not comply, we are first fined, then eventually shut down. That is the state of employment law right now. Smoking has been an exception to these laws, not the other way around.

118

I’m sorry, that just isn’t true. There is no requirement that ALL possible methods are undertaken to lower the risk of work. That’s just not the law. The NFL is not flag football. There is no requirement that pizza delivery people are provided with and compelled to wear kevlar vests. You’re just wrong as to the law.

You might think that banning smoking in the workplace is a reasonable requirement. And you might well be right in most cases. I would argue that there are times when it becomes not reasonable. I’d say that is the case when it fundamentally changes the nature of the business concerned. Most bars I don’t think that is the case in. A cigar bar I think it clearly is.

Most risks that are controlled at work are those that are not generally, and voluntarily, encountered in a home environment. It strikes me as more than a little silly to campaign that a person should not be exposed to a hazard to which they voluntarily and much more directly expose themself to in their house. Of course, there might be people who have jet engines blasting in their front room and choose not to wear ear protection, and I would still enforce the requirement to wear ear protection when working as an airline baggage handler. However, I think that is a much less common domestic situation than the bartender who smokes. I could be wrong, though.

119

No, I am not wrong as to the law.

“Each employer shall furnish to each of his employees employment and a place of employment which are free from recognized hazards that are causing or are likely to cause death or serious physical harm to his employees.”

General duty clause, Section 5(a)(1) of the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

This rule does not apply if there is no way to avoid the hazard. Firefighters can’t have a fire-free workplace, despite fires being an obvious hazard.

Smoking is a hazard. Just to take one example, cigarettes emit levels of carbon monoxide that are well beyond the Permissible Exposure Limits set by OSHA.

That the general duty clause has not been enforced, at least not evenly, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist. As I said, smoking has been an exception in the enforcement. I don’t expect that to continue.

120

I’m not an employment lawyer, but I would be willing to bet that reading the single general duty clause alone does not provide an adequate view of what the law as regards smoke at work requires. I also don’t know if second hand smoke is considered a recognized hazard under the law.

Take a look at the CFR to see what regulations have been imposed regarding this. Or find a bartender to bring an action against his employer based on Section 5(a)(1) of OSHA. I have no doubt that if it were possible, it would have been done.

The NFL would be safer as a flag football league, but it wouldn’t be the NFL any more. You can argue that bartenders in a cigar bar might be safer if smoking was not permitted there, but then it wouldn’t be a cigar bar any more. I guess the root of the issue is how closely you define the job category as to whether a hazard is avoidable or not.