No. Only the things I don’t like.
Meh, I am a smoker, but this does not seem terribly onerous or useful. I want to be sad about the restriction, but Even in Central Park the thoroughfare isn’t far away. You can smoke in less than 15 minutes if you have to. On the other hand, I doubt its going to keep the smell away from anyone in the park. The smell will drift right on in from the thoroughfare, along with all of the other lovely smells on an NYC street. By comparison, L.A.'s outdoor smoking ban is far more useless. Banning smoking on the street isn’t going to do anything measurable for the air that you can slice. This ban won’t keep me from visiting NYC again, and I wouldn’t have gone to L.A. on a dare, much less vacation. (No, the L.A. ban isn’t the reason I won’t go there. I am a horrible scofflaw, and will smoke on the street if I find myself there.)
I smoke a pipe, so filters aren’t really a problem. The small amount of ash that remains gets deposited on the street. I smoke outside even at home, and I can say from that experience that even an ashtray or garbage can won’t contain it in the wind. If I was ever so much as warned by a cop for my ash being littering, I’d carry it inside somewhere and dump it in their trashcan. I am sure they’d love the smell.
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Just like how we still go to bars, even though we can’t smoke there.
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Obviously, I am not yourself, but I largely ceased going to bars the second I couldn’t smoke there. Why overpay for alcohol when I can’t smoke? Yes, it begs the question why I overpaid for alcohol before the ban. I honestly don’t know. I suppose that it is more fun to do them together, so I overlooked the price out of joy. I do still go to clubs if there’s a band I want to see playing. If they’ve got an outdoor area where I can drink and smoke, I may buy a drink or two. If not, I won’t drink (woohoo! free cola). I doubt I am the only one, so this cuts into the amount of profit they make. I don’t know if this caused any of them to close, but there are certainly fewer places for bands to play in my area post-ban.
Note, this does not extend to restaurants. I’ve never smoked while I’ve eaten, even when I smoked cigarettes. In the end, it’s probably been a boon for them, since people vacate the table when they’re done eating, rather than sit smoking and socializing.
Are smokers FORCED to go to non-smoking bars?
I guess it’s all good then.
Cheesesteak, the force of law has been brought to bear in only one direction, such that (in many jurisdictions) a bar owner who would like to welcome smokers and smokers who would like to patronize a bar are prohibited from making a mutually-desirable arrangement.
So? Laws, by their very nature, prohibit activities. The fact that a particular activity is prohibited is not proof that the law is oppressive.
Dutchman feels that this type of law* makes our society oppressive. I was pointing out that pre-law, non-smokers could just as easily identify as being oppressed by smokers, and this law gives them liberty that they hadn’t had before.
I’m told I could just not go to a bar if I don’t like the smell, smokers can drink at home too, if they have to light up. I’m told I can try and find a bar with a top notch ventilation system, smokers can locate cigar bars, which still exist, even in NYC.
*Just to be clear, I prefer the non-smoking in buildings/bars law, I think the no-smoking outside law is silly and unnecessary, unless it’s something like a beach where there is a known cigarette butt littering problem that the law is intended to remedy.
I thank you for your suggestion and promise to give it all the consideration it’s due.
Good point. If I was free not to go to restaurants, bars and other public venues back when smoking was the norm, then smokers have that same freedom today.
If y’all are looking for your shoe, I believe you’ll find it on your other foot.
Is this meant to be about revenge?
Why can’t I have places to smoke AND you have places that are smoke free? What exactly would be the problem with that?
I am absolutely fine with banning smoking indoors, and it’s a shame to see this thread degenerate into that old argument.
However, an outdoor smoking ban is completely ridiculous. There is no public health reason, nobody is forced to inhale smoke they don’t want to (for more than a brief second at least.) It’s just smug non-smokers who want to deprive people of something they take enjoyment from. I don’t smoke anymore, but I try not to get all uppity and self-righteous about it.
If we are going to start banning things because we don’t personally enjoy them, I propose banning dogs as pets. I see way more dog shit (by volume) on public streets and walkways than cigarette butts. It’s an actual health hazard, as opposed to the made-up health hazard of second hand smoke. I can hear a yappy dog from much further away than I can smell a cigarette, and the yappiness is much more annoying. Smokers tend to be much aware of the effects of their smoke than dogs owners are when it comes their precious little puppies.
Also, I agree with the proposals for banning perfume/cologne and fat people from public spaces. Those things are also much more annoying than smelling the occasional bit of cigarette smoke.
It’s not 100% revenge, but there is a certain element of that in there…
A solution here in DC that was ignored was the idea of limited numbers of smoking licenses - a certain percentage of the liquor licenses out there, which I always thought could have been auctioned off to raise revenue for the city.
The problem was, the only legal way they found to have no smoking was to make it not about the (clearly and obviously imagined) right of a person to have a smoke free environment in a bar, but instead to go at it through workers’ safety concepts. But that argument, IMHO, got somewhat undercut by allowing cigar bars to continue.
Thatr has been a heavy argument. Servers subject to ciagarette smoke.
I work in an industry that requires me to work with chemicals that would abhor any public service individual. WCB (canada) ignores my problem. Why ? Because I wouldn’t have a job if I made an issue of it. Yes , I can wear a mask. So can any server in a tobacco environment. But who wants to wear a mask. Can you imagine a Hooters waitress with all that skin and pendulous breasts wearing a gas mask while she serves you?
It is absolutely a legitimate argument though - the employer has a responsibility to make the workplace as safe as possible, given certain constraints. So the argument comes down to what the inherent risks of bartending are. I can fully understand defining a bar both ways - as a place where people drink (in which case smoking can be legitimately banned), or as a place where people smoke and drink (amongst others) in which case passive smoking is inherent in the job risk.
That’s why I’ve always supported compromise in this in the end. The market wasn’t working to provide no smoking bars. I don’t know why, but it simply wasn’t - some existed, but they were rare. I think it is a good thing it was given a push. However, if we accept the existence of cigar bars (which I am glad we do) I genuinely don’t see the problem with accepting the idea of smoking bars. 25% of bars could be permitted to allow smoking.
Virginia has something similar, though it is far from 25%. I can think of 3 bars in my neighborhood that can allow smoking because of the way they are laid out. Only one of them I actually like, which is a pain. But it seems to me that we could make everyone happy, including the bartenders, many of whom have no issue with working in places that allow smoking, by a compromise solution. Trouble is smokers have been assholes about things in the past, which makes non-smokers now feel it is payback time.
Make it look like a Mideastern harem costume, and it might go over very well at Hooters.
The previous was an “oppression” by culture, the present an oppression by law. Not the same thing.
If the culture of declining acceptance of tobacco simply meant that most bars and restaurants decided for themselves to prohibit smoking, that would be an entirely different matter to which I wouldn’t have the slightest objection. (I hated being around smokers in restaurants too.)
Look at it this way: would it not be oppressive to have a law which enforced a cultural preference by requiring bar and restaurant owners to accommodate smokers?
Well, that depends what you mean by “accomodate”.
It’s not about you. Restaurants and bars are privately owned. When you let the government dictate choices then it will. Someday they will dictate a choice you won’t like.
If a law were to dictate that all bars, restaurants and similar establishments must permit the use of tobacco products by customers of legal age to do so, and provide ashtrays, that would be absurdly authoritarian and condemned (I hope) from all quarters. If I’m running a sandwich shop, damn right I should be able to put up a No Smoking sign, and eject an asshole who doesn’t comply.
It is for exactly the same reason that, if I’m running a nightclub, I should be allowed to put out ashtrays and let people smoke while they have a drink and watch the band.
Now, to the OT–the difference between smoking in private establishments and smoking in public places is that public places belong to everybody. Everybody, we agree (I hope), has the right to not have smoke “forced on them,” as it was earlier put. So it’s easy to understand banning smoking in public buildings. And it’s not a huge stretch to ban smoking in close and crowded outdoor public spaces, like certain courtyards and entryways and maybe even on downtown sidewalks. I’m fine with people voting on a local ordinance somewhere in that territory.
But banning smoking in wide-open places like parks and beaches, like banning smoking in private businesses or homes, has left behind the guardianship of anyone’s legitimate rights and become enforced culture. That is oppressive, no matter the other virtues of the culture being imposed.
Personally, I don’t care at all whether or where smokers want to smoke, nor do I want to impose “non-smoking culture” on them.
I just don’t want to breathe their smoke, and I don’t see anything wrong or oppressive in supporting laws that keep public places smoke-free.
And yes, that includes public places as in “privately owned businesses that serve the general public”, not just public property as in “government buildings”.
That’s not a desire to impose my “culture” on smokers; that’s a desire to keep them from imposing their “culture”, or rather their smoke, on me.
If smokers could manage to smoke in public places and keep their smoke to themselves, I would be completely content with that, and utterly outraged if any officious busybodies decided that we still needed smoking bans. If smokers aren’t bothering other people by actively intruding upon them with the offensive byproducts of their own preferred activities, then they can do what they like as far as I’m concerned.
And maybe at some point somebody will perfect something like this here now newfangled “e-cigarette” so that it actually becomes possible for smokers to keep their smoke to themselves effectively.
For the time being, though, as far as I’m concerned, it’s legitimate to have laws against smoking in public places for the same reason it’s okay to have laws against loud screaming in public places or spitting in public places or shitting in public places. You don’t automatically have a right to spew your unpleasant effluvia where it intrudes on other members of the public, even if the private owner of the business operating in that public place happens to be okay with it.
(And yes, I’m completely fine with applying that same reasoning to effluvia like perfumes too. If you can’t keep it to yourself, don’t go into a public place with it.)
It’s ridiculous that you can’t even smoke at a tobacconist anymore in most ban states. Here’s a store that exists for nothing else put to sell pipes, tobacciana, and all sorts of tobacco - a store a non-smoker would never have a reason to go into - and you can’t smoke there. The owners liked when you could too. If you lounge at their place while enjoying a cigar or pipe, you’re much more likely to buy more stuff from them.