Smoking....YOUR humble opinion

The BBQ Pit
101

Jesus-God-Almighty, you don’t get it, do you?

I don’t think smoking should be allowed everywhere. If a restaurant/bar wants to ban smoking, more power to them. They, according to people like you, will have a unique niche market that caters to people that want to get drunk while keeping their lungs healthy. I have no problem with that.

What I have a problem with is a city telling a bar that smoking isn’t allowed. Even if the workers and clientele are smokers.

Let’s spitball this idea. A bar in California has a solid customer base of smokers and people that don’t mind being in the deadly environment of imminent-smoke-death. The bartenders and waitresses all smoke.

Regulars, that any bar depends on (you’ve never owned or run one obviously), are the income of the bar. They are what keep the joint running.

Now let’s just go nuts and imagine there’s a bar 2 blocks down the road that is smoke-free.

Which would you go to? Common sense would say the second one. But real world (and your post) says you have no choice. What backwater city do you live in that doesn’t have a non-smoking bar?

Your ideals are noble, I guess, but you’re imposing your beleifs on people you’d vehemently fight for imposing controls on your legal choices.

Forget the taxes, nobody gives a shit about that anymore since smokers are the one’s paying them. What you have to realize is that bans are just that. Bans.

There is no choice. There is no choice in using a legal product. There is no choice allowed the buisiness owner to decide if the product is used in his/her establishment.

There is no chance of applying for exemption if it can be proven that the regulars don’t give a shit one way or the other. Smokers or not, the consumers don’t have a say. The ban is the ban. And all those getting into a twist about the ban being in effect aren’t the types that are coming to our bar.

Allowing smoking means establishments can decide to bar smoking. Banning smoking takes away the choice. I’m Pro-Choice. Don’t tell me how to live my life.

102

All right, dammit, this time I’m going to insist on an answer from somebody:

WHY DON’T YOU USE A PERSONAL SMOKE-REMOVING DEVICE?

See post #96 for details. Thank you.

103

So you would have no problem with me if I walked up to you and gave you a nice blast of pepper spray ?

That’s because you’re a malignant slimeball. It’s not smoking that makes you happy, it’s spreading cancer and misery.

I hope you do; with any luck, it will promote the passage of laws resulting in your imprisonment. For that matter, since smoke causes cancer, perhaps blowing smoke should be designated assault with a deadly weapon; you sound like you’d make a great living advertisement for such a law.

Arrogant jerk. Has it occured to you that public places are not “your ground” ?

That’s just ridiculous; the body is is in a completely different catagory. For example, if I stole some food from you and ate it, I’d get one penalty; if I sawed off one of your limbs and ate it I’d get a rather more severe penalty.

Many smokers have been malignant bullies since I’ve been a child.

104

You’re comparing the Patriot Act to smoking bans? To this day I haven’t had anything affect me due to the PA. I have had the smoking ban affect me. I can differentiate the two, but maybe that’s just a result of real-world life.

Should the NSA tap and record all my calls (hell, I give you permission to do so as well), it won’t have any effect on my life. The conversations are pretty mundane. My plans for world domination are all conveyed through the antennae to the mother ship.

And how is my credibility (I’m sure it’s a valued stock in your portfolio) challenged with what I’ve said here? I’ve been pretty consistant in smoking bans. If you want a sig line, use this:
I have no problem with the Patriot Act. Just allow me a smoke while doing shooters with mhendo
There. Unrelated subjects, but I aim to please. I live to spread the happy. :slight_smile:

105

Depends. Did I explicitly give consent, or am I in a place where the owner has no problem with it, and I could reasonably be expected to know that I would be exposed to pepper spray?

Somehow I doubt one is going to get cancer from breathing the diluted fumes of a latakia blend for 5 seconds.

If that were the case, I’d have to weigh the desirability of smoking with the possibility of being thrown into prison. As it stands, though, I’m willing to risk a little fine in return for the ability to smoke on public property in the open air.

A bar is not a public place, nor is the front step of a privately-owned building. As for public property, that’s owned by the state, and they in any case aren’t deserving of any respect, only fear.

But would you equally punish stealing a diabetic’s insulin, and unintentionally exposing someone to smoke against their will for less than 10 seconds?

Or maybe you’ve just been a pussy.

106

Hey, sorry, i guess i mistook your selfishness for a principled stand.

After all, you applauded when treis opposed smoking bans as “too nanny-stateish,” so i assumed (apparently erroneously) that you were opposed to excessive state interference in the freedoms of its citizens.

You’ve cleared things up for me now. You only give a shit about state tyrrany when it affects you personally. Fair enough. As long as i know where you stand.

107

I DETEST people who can’t hold their liquor, be it the silly drunk too-loud housewife or the mullet head who wants to fight or the slobbery old business executive who wants to tell you why Revelations proves we’re in the End Times or whatever- I just can’t stand it. I’ve had friends who were involved in serious accidents while driving drunk, one of my favorite co-workers was paralyzed from the waist down for life after a drunk driver hit her car and badly injured one of her grandchildren, both of my parents had alcohol problems and my father died at 54 in large part due to his abuse of alcohol. Alcohol has destroyed several relationships that I have known of and led to numerous deaths and ruinations.

So I don’t drink.

Well, that’s not completely true- I’m not a teetotaller but I go months and months and months between drinks. I’ve been drunk once in the past five years, that was almost a year ago, and I probably haven’t had two drinks since then. I don’t go to bars because I hate to be around drunk people.

I would never support a ban on serving alcohol in restaurants because “I find drunks offensive” and “second hand drinking kills and maims”. I would never tell people that they shouldn’t be allowed to roll around drunk in their own living room so long as they’re not neglecting their child while doing so or leaving a blowtorch going next to their End of Days kerosene stash. It’s not my business. If they get caught driving drunk then I’m of the “have no mercy- I don’t care if it’s a first offense, give them a HUGE income-based fine and probation for their driver’s license” but if they can drink responsibly and drive I’ve no problems with them.

I’m a smoker. I want to quit but it’s damned hard, especially when you’re dealing with other issues. I totally understand that many people are allergic to or just don’t like my cigarettes. I live in a city of 80,000 people and small as that is I can think immediately of a dozen restaurants that are smoke free, and I patronize them anyway. There’s an IHOP here and a Waffle House that are both 24/7 and within a short walk of each other. They’re roughly the same price range and have roughly the same crowds [cops, students, etc.] IHOP is smoke free and Waffle House isn’t. I prefer the food at IHOP when I’m on a 2 am feeding but I’ll usually go to Waffle House instead because I can smoke there; if I hated cigarette smoke but preferred WH’s food I’d probably go to IHOP. It’s all about choice.

I agree with non-smoking sections in all restaurants and that all public buildings and hospitals should be non-smoking inside and the like. You don’t always have a choice about going to a public building and in places like movie theaters it’s a safety concern as well as just a stupid idea to have cigarettes going while Ice Age 2 is playing. (I also believe that all public buildings should designate a smoking area and place ashtrays there in their own self interest because SMOKERS ARE GOING TO SMOKE. They’re addicted. You might as well not have seven hundred cigarette butts on the sidewalk or in the grass.

But in businesses that people enter freely and of their own will such as a restaurant or bar capitalism will out as to whether or not smoking should be allowed. It certainly doesn’t affect the business of the privately owned pizza/Italian place downtown that doesn’t allow it- the place is always mobbed- and it doesn’t affect the business of the restaurant/bar across the street that does allow it- it’s always mobbed also by smokers and non-smokers. I don’t want to be around drunks so I don’t go to places where people can get drunk, why can’t people who don’t want to be around smokers do the same?

I honestly do think that once smoking is effectively illegalized we’re going to see a major wave of action against alcohol related businesses incidentally. We’ll see lawsuits against alcohol wholesalers by people who’ve lost loved ones to drunk drivers, Coors being sued by Mrs. Moore whose husband died of cirrhosis, alcohol sales being banned in restaurants, etc… I’ll be a non-smoker and a non-drinker by then and as such fully entitled to make my own smug cloud, but I doubt I will.

108

Hey - this looks exactly like the kind of talk-across-each-other-don’t-communicate-thread I want to join in on, on page 3.

I fully support no-smoking sections. All the public building bannings are ridiculous - they should at least allow the building the option to have a smoking room rather than push all the smokers outside. And restaurants/bars? Hell, let the market decide.

But

DON’T THROW YOUR BUTTS OUT YOUR CAR WINDOW!

109

Can we all stop with the stupid “These laws are because you’re inconsiderate” bullshit?

It’s stupid when conservatives say they’d vote for liberals if liberals were only nicer about making their points. It’s stupid when people say that gays would have equal rights soon if they weren’t so obnoxious about speeding up the process. It was stupid when people told blacks that if they’d just stay in their place, they’d eventually be treated fairly, and it’s stupid when people say these bans wouldn’t be in place if smokers were nicer.

There are a lot of assholes in the world, and they don’t all share a trait or habit, other than being assholes. If they’re really making any decisions for you, you need to grow a pair.

If you want to vote conservative, do do, but don’t blame loudly protesting liberals.

If you want to be a racist, be one, but don’t blame civil rights activists.

If you want to be a homophobe, then be one, but don’t blame activist gays.

If you want to ban smoking, do so, but don’t blame inconsiderate smokers.

110

Or, it could be that there are different classifications of property, and that the State has different levels of power over them.

You don’t consent to it. You come on my property and I pick up a stick and start poking you with it. Hard.

Ayn Rand would be proud of your ability to parrot Howard Roark and John Galt, but somehow I doubt that if you came to my house and I started poking you with a stick you’d just sit there and take it.

You also need to learn the diffeence between “unjust” and “personally inconvenient.”

111

Pick one. You either want government to tell you what to do, or you don’t.

I’ve at least stated, numerous times, that so long as the government doesn’t affect my daily life, I don’t give a shit. Record my calls. Track my websites. Whatever. I don’t do anything illegal so I’d probably bore the Feds to sleep.

I focus on what affects me. If I want to down 8 shots at a bar, that’s OK. But God forbid I have a smoke after the 3rd!

Again, I have no problem with a smoke-free bar setting up shop. If people want to drink without smelling smoke, I salute the bar-owner for deciding what clientele he wants to cater to. Sounds reasonable?

If a bar-owner wants to run an establishment that allows people to smoke. I support that as well.

The problem is, the proprietor doesn’t have that choice in many cases. The law disallows any choice.

So, while the non-smokers have a plethora of clean air environments to drink in, smokers have to smoke in the back alley. Well, sometimes not even in the alley depending on how far from an entrance they have to be. In some areas smoking in the alley is cause for a citation.

I want someone to justify this. Let’s say I want to open a bar in California or New York City. I state flat-out that smoking is allowed. Don’t like smoke? Maybe you shouldn’t work here. (Fuck that “I deserve a job, bend to my will” bullshit). If my bar doesn’t open, there are no jobs.

Customers complain? Go somewhere else. I’m sure there are enough child-kicking, kitten-strangling heathens that will show up knowing they can have a heater with their shot of Cuervo.

Based on current sentiment and laws, there’s little chance anyone could find 8 or 9 waitresses and a half dozen bartenders that smoke, right?

No chance at all a person could staff a bar with smokers. That would be ridiculous! And Goddamnit we’d have to be insane to think we could ever pull that off!

Crap. What do you mean the city said we aren’t allowed to? We don’t even have the option? We’re just shut out?

Good to know we don’t have any fucking choice in our business. The people walking through the doors apparently don’t either. Luckliy those that can’t handle smoke have to ban it for everyone. They’ve been forced to avoid the non-smoking bars for so long it’s about time we suck them off again.

112

We get your point. But for being a douchebag, I’m going to break my “good guy” rule and shove my next heater up the ass of a Panda.

You have nobody to blame but yourself.

113

You just confirmed exactly what i said before: that it’s not the principle of government intervention in general that concerns you, but only government intervention that affects you. As i said, fair enough.

But can’t you then see why other people might take a similar attitude.

Look at your second paragraph above. What if i took that paragraph, and modified it to fit my own position. It might say:

So long as the government doesn’t affect my daily life, I don’t give a shit. Ban smoking in restaurants. Ban it in bars. Ban it in public places. Hell, make it illegal altogether. I don’t smoke, so it doesn’t bother me in the slightest.

Do you think that’s a reasonable position for me to take? Based on your principle of self-interest, i would think you’d find my stand unproblematic.

114

Slight hijack to this thread (in which it looks like something I already ate, and crapped out afterwards), does anybody know how beneficial smoking is to society, on a state and national level, via taxes?

Who said smoking wasn’t good for us? :stuck_out_tongue:

But really, anybody have these numbers?

115

No. With all due respect, no. The issue here is someone that owns 4 walls and a ceiling having the choice to allow the tax-laden dirty smokers a place to smoke a heater while having a drink.

I understand a restaurant not wanting us smokers dirtying up their space. We can accept that. We know we’re lucky to be mistaken for second-class citizens. We deal with it. (And those that are asshats at a restaurant, I have a have a serious problem with them.)

But for fuck’s sake, when I want to go to a pub/bar/tavern and shoot pool/darts/people I’d like to have an occasional smoke.

If the bartender, waitresses and bouncer smoke or don’t mind smoke, why the fuck can’t I smoke? Oh yeah, that’s right. The ordinance says I can’t. It’s a law protecting the people in the bar.

God forbid they go to a bar that is smoke-free. Let’s take away the choice of a smoker to smoke in a bar.

Big difference between Bush listenting in on my calls and having a smoke while shooting Cuervo.

116

I am sorry about your father, but this is a dangerous way of thinking. Food for thought: (hypotheticals)

Fast food killed my brother long before its time, I hope it is banned.

My brother was killed by a car, I hope they are banned.

Alcohol killed my brother, I hope it is banned.

Rock climbing killed my brother, I hope it is banned.

The list could go on. Regrettably, when we make personal choices and are hamred from them, it is our responsibility. If your father was killed form exposure to second-hand smoke, then I fully understand drives to prevent it in public, enclosed places, where people get services they CANNOT get elsewhere. But, in general, government regulation is wrong when it comes to personal vice. It is a slippery slope.

117

You never get an answer because it’s a worthless idea.

The health impact of smoking is measured in pack-years. That means that you don’t register on the scale at all until you’ve inhaled 7,300 cigarettes. (And then only barely; the risk is negligible until you’ve got years and years under your belt.) That’s an unimaginably huge shitload of second-hand smoke you need to be in close proximity to before there is any measurable health risk.

But oh the asthmatics! They just can’t breathe if they catch even the faintest whiff of smoke, you know. Surely the primary focus of society should be to cleanse everywhere of anything that might pose a risk to our weakest and most sickly citizens. That’s why legislation banning peanuts inside (and outside within 25 feet) of all buildings should be enacted too, right?

I long for the days when the ultra-fragile lived their lives in plastic bubbles.

118

But you are not truely being assertive, but more passive aggressive as you said you will ‘yes sir - no sir’ to any authority figure.

Again you are hurting your cause, so please smoke up each and every time you see a no smoking sign, and have an extra one for me too.

Re: designiated smoking areas
Sounds like a OK idea on it’s face but the real problem I see is with liability, since the smoke is concentrated in such a small area (for indoor smoking areas). Some train systems that used to allow smoking, went to smoking cars - the smoke was so strong in those cars that most commuter rails banned it outright.

Who are these ‘those’ are you talking about. If it is elected gov’t officials and empowered gov’t authorities, like the fire martial, OSHA, Board of Health, IRS then YES if this bar is operated inside the US and is accessing the US economy.

119

I just spent a week in Vegas at a corporate thing at the Venetian. That’s $260/night normal rate. fucking smoke everywhere. I’d be happy to see smoking banned in the US. It’s simply vile to have to put up with that.

120

Well, i’m glad we can agree on that at least…

The violation of rights caused by the wiretapping and by some aspects of the Patriot Act are much more serious than stopping you having a cigarette.