[QUOTE=Monty]
IIRC, California’s smoking ban for restaurants and bars was mostly for the health of the workers, not the patrons.
[/QUOTE]
But the bartenders are the ones generating the secondhand smoke. That’s what the ashtray next to the cash register is for. Besides, in a lot of places the owner tends the bar.
[QUOTE=Monty]
IIRC, California’s smoking ban for restaurants and bars was mostly for the health of the workers, not the patrons.
[/QUOTE]
Is is too bad that the employees have no choice but to work in a dangerous environment? Are they not being infringed upon? Perhaps they can seek work elsewhere. But then bars and restaurants would have a very small hiring pool and it would unecessarily limit the job possibilities of non-smokers.
A non-smoking ban is a much lesser infringement on smokers than a smoke-filled bar is to non-smokers.
[QUOTE=saoirse]
But the bartenders are the ones generating the secondhand smoke. That’s what the ashtray next to the cash register is for. Besides, in a lot of places the owner tends the bar.
[/QUOTE]
I don’t have a cite, but if the owner is the sole worker, he or she could be exempt.
[QUOTE=Sarahfeena]
You can take your drinking business to a liquor store, and drink at home. Smoking in bars is in no way preventing you from killing yourself with booze.
[/QUOTE]
Of course. But can’t you see that I now have limitations where I can drink (because I don’t want to be affected by SHS), when smokers do not.
The good of the many outweigh the good of the few. Anyway, and if you’re not a drinker, you’ll have to trust me on this one: a bar owner will not lose significant (any?) patronage over a smoking ban, even to smokers.
[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
I don’t have a cite, but if the owner is the sole worker, he or she could be exempt.
[/QUOTE]
I know a couple who tried that here. They’re not. Even though the hippie guy who made my kid’s futon not only didn’t wear steel-toed boots when he built it, but in fact had no shoes on at all, and New York forbids the manufacture of furniture under those conditions. Apparently worker safety laws are mainly to promote clean living.
[QUOTE=Mince]
The good of the many outweigh the good of the few. Anyway, and if you’re not a drinker, you’ll have to trust me on this one: a bar owner will not lose significant (any?) patronage over a smoking ban, even to smokers.
[/QUOTE]
I seem to recall an article where Irish pub owners were really hurting because of the smoking ban in Ireland.
That surprises me, honestly. And I don’t agree with it.
[QUOTE=Mince]
The good of the many outweigh the good of the few. Anyway, and if you’re not a drinker, you’ll have to trust me on this one: a bar owner will not lose significant (any?) patronage over a smoking ban, even to smokers.
[/QUOTE]
Simply not true. You’re theorising when there is perfectly concrete data about his phenomenon: when a smoking ban is instituted, and in the absence of other factors, bars’ revenue will go down. This has been seen in the recent bans of smoking in pubs in Ireland and Scotland, and, as a result, publicans are losing money.
Right. It’s a health risk.
Now let’s see then quantify that risk and publish it in comparison to other risks to our health. Let’s see how far down the table it comes and then let’s try to retrieve a little fucking sanity before the health nazis completely take over the planet.
And no, I don’t smoke.
[QUOTE=Cheesesteak]
Of course not. So, as my neighbor, if a single molecule of your bug spray gets into my yard, I’ll call the cops and have you arrested for attempted murder.
[/QUOTE]
Right. Because that is what people are advocating in this thread. Arresting smokers who release a single molecule of smoke for attempted murder.
OK. Forget the bugspray. Let’s say I mix up a perfectly harmless substance that smells like a combination of rotten eggs, dog farts, and skunk juice, and fill an aerosol bottle with it. Would you have any objection to that being sprayed in your face while you are standing around polluting the air that I breathe?
I was implying the opposite.
[QUOTE=jsgoddess]
I don’t have a cite, but if the owner is the sole worker, he or she could be exempt.
[/QUOTE]
Our smoking ban is a workplace ban as well. Over here if you are a long distance truck driver and caught smoking in your cabin when you are alone you could be done under the law and fined for smoking in a workplace.
BTW the workplace ban over here has got arond 90% approval rate even with smokers. The only thing I’ve got a problem with is non-smokers going out of their way to be assholes about it. Yes there are asshole smokers as well, I don’t think anybody’s denying that.
[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Right. Because that is what people are advocating in this thread. Arresting smokers who release a single molecule of smoke for attempted murder.
[/quote]
Well, assault WAS mentioned, and not by a smoking proponent. But that’s a fair cop, to make it equivalent, let’s say I want you cited for allowing some of your bug spray to waft into my yard.
I’d like to change your analogy from being sprayed in the face (nobody is supporting a smoker’s right to blow smoke in your face) to just using the stuff around others and smelling up the joint. People do shit like this all the time, too much perfume, smelly ethnic food dishes at work, bad hygiene, etc. If people are around you’re going to have to deal with how they smell, look, and sound without being a whiny baby about it.
You know, I skimmed through this thread with an eerie sense of deja viewing it for the first time. And I was right. Change the names, the cast of characters, and the specific referents for the points made, and it’s the same topic, from GD and other Pit threads, on, oh, the morality of homosexuality, gay marriage, abortion, eminent domain, gun control, and a whole slew of other issues.
The fight is not between smokers and non-smokers – even though that’s what one gets at first glance.
It’s between people with a laissez faire attitude and those who believe their preferred way to do or eschew things should be mandatory on all. And there are people from both those viewpoints on both sides of the smoking line.
Yes, non-smokers. It should be possible for you to go about your appointed rounds without being compelled to inhale second-hand smoke, if that is your wish. Smokers who cluster just outside main entrances, people who smoke anywhere and everywhere in public accommodations like restaurants, bars, etc. – they’re depriving you of something reasonable to ask. Non-smokers are emphatically entitled to be able to live a normal life without having to deal with the supposed rights of smokers to smoke wherever they choose.
But them take the alternative view. I have been in the one room designated for smoking in an eleven-story office building, vented separately by fans to the outside (to an area where people do not congregate and where motor vehicles idle), accessible only through a double set of doors providing an airlock of sorts, and had people come in and criticize because people were smoking there, in the one place set aside for them to smoke. I have sat on a bench in the designated smoking area outside an airline terminal, at the extreme northeast end of the terminal quite literally a quarter mile from the main entrance – for kicks, I paced it off – and had people walk up there and criticize me and others for smoking there.
New York State adopted a law where no smoking was permitted in any restaurant or bar, for the protection of the employees. This was a very popular measure in New York City. But it had the interesting effects, in my home town, of: (1) two small bars closed down, having had their profit margin destroyed by reduced clientele and no convenient location to make a designated outside smoking area; (2) at a bar where “my kids” worked which I came to like a lot, there arose the custom of the bartenders filling all orders at a given point, following which the bartenders and all the clientele would troop outside to the designated smoking area and enjoy a cigarette. They complied with state law, to be sure, but there was not one person, employee or customer, who did not smoke. Who exactly was being protected there?
The point I am making here is pretty damn simple, and I’m surprised that nobody has hit on it yet: Whatever your stance on the smoking issue, you do not have the right to regulate the lives of others to insist they do what you choose to do, or refrain from what you choose not to do.
You may think that gay sex is a sin against God and nature. That does not give you the right to regulate the love life of gay people. You may think that the Second Amendment is completely outmoded. That does not give you the right to demand that law-abiding firearms owners must give up their guns. You may think that GWB is the leader this country needs, or the greatest evil since Hitler suicided; that does not give you the right to stifle and demonize those who believe the opposite.
And whichever side of the smoking issue you stand on, you do not have the right to demand that others must endure what you think is right. If you want to smoke, fine, but you do not have the right to do so anywhere you please at the cost of forcing non-smokers to breathe your smoke. But if you choose not to smoke, you do not have the right to ban smokers from smoking anywhere in the world simply because you might at some point choose to go there. They have the right to limited areas where the smoke will not filter over and bother you, where they can smoke in peace. Perhaps they are harming themselves; the evidence is great. But they have the right to choose to do so in a manner unobstrusive to you.
Bottom line to me: Every person has the right to mind his own business – to do, or refrain from doing, what he chooses to do or not do, without having someone else’s lifestyle imposed on him by force.
If I choose to smoke, and there is only a 300-square-foot room in a complex of 9,000,000 square feet, or a given small area of roofed terrace outside one area of the building, where smoking is permitted, I will go to that room or that terrace. I have no right to impose my smoking on you anywhere else. But you equally have no right to demand that that room or terrace area be made non-smoking along with the rest of the complex to protect your right to clean air anywhere in the structure you might choose to go.
Anyone who does not accept this premise is courteously requested to be consistent, and advocate for such things as abolishing the Second Amendment, agreeing that gay people have no rights to their own love life if a majority decides otherwise, and so on. You know the drill; you’ve seen it argued in various ways in hundreds of threads: “I’m right, so everybody needs to do what I think is right, by force of law.” I don’t care whether it’s carcinogens, sodomy, abortion, firearms, or whatever: absent a clear and present danger to the rest of the world from permitting it to happen anywhere, there is a public right to choose what you wish to do or not do without having the alternative forced upon you by a majority which disagrees with you.
Well said, Polycarp!
Indeed. I would add that it’s the right (morally speaking, and ideally legally, too) for business owners to allow smoking or not on their premises. Nobody is forced to patronize a business. If you hate the smell of curry, it would be foolish to eat at an Indian restaurant, if you’re allergic to cats, it would be foolish to volunteer at a cat shelter, and if you’re very worried about the health effects of secondhand smoke, it would be foolish to go to a bar that allows smoking.
[QUOTE=Jackmannii]
What part of “promote the general welfare” do you not understand? I see we’ve strayed from constitutional principles into Uncle Beer’s Way It Oughta Be Or Else, You Hypocrites. High dudgeon, but not much logic.
[/quote]
What part do you not understand? These guys weren’t talking about your personal physical condition, you dipshit. Your health, anyone’s health ain’t but a fucking flyspeck in the “general welfare” of a nation. They were talking about a creating productive society. Did you miss the day they covered that in fourth grade?
I already told you. Anybody attempting to use legislation to usurp the rights of others is abhorrent. Figure it out from there.
[QUOTE=Polycarp]
You know, I skimmed through this thread with an eerie sense of deja viewing it for the first time.
[/QUOTE]
I can tell you merely skimmed it, since no one in this thread has advocated that people should have to stop smoking if they aren’t affecting non-smokers.
If you want to use the analogies you brought in, fine.
No one forces straight people to be gay.
No one forces gun haters to buy one.
Don’t force nonsmokers to smoke.
And the laws about employees already force many employers to protect the employee from things (like noise) that the employee is completely fine with and in fact may enjoy (like really loud music) on his or her own time. We don’t get to destroy our employees’ hearing, even if they agree to it. Is it surprising that in many places we wouldn’t get to destroy our employees’ breathing, even if they agree to it?
[QUOTE=CandidGamera]
I swear, I fear for the future of the human race. If you introduce one iota of a toxic substance to my system against my will, you have harmed me in a miniscule fashion. You’ve set a toenail over the line that protects my rights from yours. I’m not saying you should be strung up for it. There’s no lost sense of proportion. I never said “one molecule is too much.”
Great. I’ve crossed the line. So what are you gonna do about it?
Okay - since I don’t smoke, I’ll sell my car today. And stop cleaning the toilet. I ascared of that big bad line of yours.
Well, not nobody. I made that point very early on.
Nobody is doing that. You, too, have lost your sense of proportion. Your statement reflects the fallacy of the excluded middle. A few particles of tobacco smoke inhaled on your way through the door into the office simply ain’t “smoking.”
[QUOTE=UncleBeer]
Nobody is doing that. You, too, have lost your sense of proportion. Your statement reflects the fallacy of the excluded middle. A few particles of tobacco smoke inhaled on your way through the door into the office simply ain’t “smoking.”
[/QUOTE]
I would agree, but while all of the smokers at the SDMB are a delight unto the world, veritable paragons of holiness, it’s amazing how many obnoxious fuckers smoke in my face.
And I’m not someone who makes a big deal about it. I don’t think I’ve ever told anyone off, fake coughed, flapped my hands, or otherwise acted prissy.
I don’t care if smokers stink. I don’t care if they die early (well, I care, but I’m not going to do anything about it). I’ll admit to getting a little annoyed with smokers’ hack, but coughing is a fairly aggravating sound and someone with a cold is even more annoying because they should be at home not breathing on me.
I’m not pushing for more legislation, but I think the legislation makes sense. I think it is perfectly in line with other safety measures that protect employees no matter their wishes. Just as we have to harass our employees to wear hearing protection and safety glasses no matter if they hate it.
The gun analogy I think is fairly apt. No, someone isn’t shooting me in the heart, but I’m getting winged on occasion. I don’t want to take away anyone’s guns, I just want to stop getting winged. And just as I think it’s the responsibility of the person with the gun to stop shooting at me, it’s the responsibility of the person smoking to stop winging me.
We can’t control everything. There are other sources of pollution, and some are controllable (like perfume, that bane of existence) and some are not (like car exhausts, yet). Wanting to be free of the controllable ones while being unable to escape the uncontrollable ones doesn’t make the uncontrollable ones a defense for the controllable ones.