But people get severely injured in sports all the time. Trent Green had a horrible concussion this year and Chris Simms lost a spleen. Very few boxing matches end without at least a bloody face. Aside from the Double Deuce workers, I’ve never seen a bartender go to work with a serious concern of coming home injured.
Here’s a study that may interest you - showing that club workers are exposed to so much secondhand smoke on the job that they qualify as “light” smokers - with the increased risk of heart disease and cancer that that entails.
For food service workers (who typically have less exposure to secondhand smoke than bar/club employees), there’s epidemiologic evidence suggesting that they run a 50% increased risk of lung cancer.
Most would see evidence like this as translating to a serious concern about “coming home injured”.
We enforce standards for workplace safety in many industries. There’s no reason to exempt bars and restaurants, even if some of their customers feel inconvenienced.
I forget, which law was it that closed all the bars down?
The law makes a small change to the bar experience, to help protect the workers and patrons. Back in the day, football was played without helmets, but we made that small change to protect the players. Back in the day, boxing was bareknuckle, but we made that change to protect boxers.
If you want boxing without knockouts and football without injuries you have to shut the sport down altogether, and nobody wants to do that. You take the steps you can that help secure a safe environment, without going so far that you destroy the very thing you want to make safe.
Non smoking bars and restaurants do not destroy the bar and restaurant scene. NYC has been non smoking for a few years now, California even longer, and they don’t have any problems with bars and restaurants staying profitable.
Both these changes were not made by government. Instead, the sports reformed themselves.
That’s the way that the smoking issue should be resolved. If patrons do not like smoking, then bars will adapt to that. There are already a number of bars that do that. However, if patrons like smoking (that is, the bars offering smoking are profitable) and workers don’t mind it (that is, the bars have no problem finding workers) then the government should not interfere. People choose to engage in risky behavior. I know that some people think that’s stupid, but I don’t think that the paternalistic liberals should get to dictate how risky one’s life choices should be.
You’re right, the Bar Association should be making these reformations, since they have the ability to shut out any business that doesn’t comply with their new rules. Oh wait, there is no such association, every single bar in the entire country is a separate enterprise that holds zero allegiance to the other bars in the area. The only connection different bars have to each other are the laws under which they operate.
If a boxer wants to use gloves because it’s safer, he can’t go into a match with a bareknuckles guy. He can’t use the standing 8 count when his opponent is going to jump on him old-school style. The rules have to be the same. In a sport, there is an organization sanctioning the competition, ensuring the same rules by both teams. In the bar industry, the only organization that can set the rules of play is the government.
I’m amazed that people think the only way reforms can be made is to have them imposed from the top down. Actually, the best way to make reforms is from the bottom up. If smoking in bars is unpopular, then bars that have smoking will lose business. Some bars have found that it’s more profitable to be non-smoking. Some have found that it’s more profitable to allow smoking. Let the consumers decide, not the heavy hand of government.
And if a fighter wants to engage in mixed martial arts, he can do so. And if he wants to engage in bare knuckle brawls, he can do so. It’s the choice of the fighter, not a choice imposed by government.
True, but people can choose which rules to obey because there are a variety of different permutations of fighting.
Sure, the government lays down basic rules. However, the market is a much better arbiter of what specifics should be offered by different bars.
You can either stick to your theories or look at the history of non-smoking laws in various states.
The reality is that these changes never happen on their own, bar and restaurant owners are too scared to make the changes by themselves. When legislated, the business do just fine, in many cases, the industry sees a boost in revenues and employment after they go non-smoking.
So, you can say “change is better from the bottom up” when reality has proven that the tops down approach cleans the air, helps worker health, and improves business, while the bottoms up approach does nothing.
That’s untrue. As a former resident, I can assure you there were a number of non-smoking bars/restaurants in DC before they passed their smoking ban.
Maybe, maybe not. There is proof that bars and restaurants on the whole have done fine after smoking bans are passed, but this is more than likely attributable to the expanding economy. There have not been any studies that have isolated the bans’ effect.
No, there is no proof that it improves business or helps worker health. There are a variety of studies that indicate that the harm of second-hand smoke are overblown. There is also no proof that bans help business.
Wow! I didn’t know I was such a fascist bastard! Thank you, Der Trihs, for enlightening me on this point! The next time I see my manager whipping a coworker for screwing up a test, I’ll know that we are, in fact, nothing more than slaves, and that the 13th Ammendment was apparently never passed. :rolleyes:
Look, dude. People have been smoking in bars for hundreds of years now. Literally; since about the 16th or 17th Century. If you get a job in a bar, you do so knowing full well that you are going to be exposed to cigarette smoke. It comes with the turf, and every bar employee knows this, and decided (either consciously or unconsciously) that this was an acceptable risk. If smoking in bars was something that began recently, it would be a different story, but that’s not the case. As it is, the state is deciding that bar emplyees are too stupid to make this sort of choice for themselves.
On the contrary, the evidence is overwhelming that secondhand smoke poses numerous serious health hazards, as summarized in June’s report by the Surgeon General.
Most published studies (from cities including El Paso and New York City) have found that after public smoking bans were instituted, bar and restaurant business remained steady or increased.
When you look at the hard evidence (as opposed to anecdotes or false claims from the tobacco and bar lobbies), public smoking bans promote improved public health and have been shown to have a neutral or positive impact on the businesses they regulate.
I’m not certain about boxing as I could care less about the sport, but football isn’t very safe at all. Almost every week a few guys go down with injuries significant enough to knock them out for the season, and severe concussions and spleen ruptures aren’t very safe, are they? So I’d just like to know why you don’t feel football should be adjusted enough or outright banned so as to prevent such injuries.
If banning smoking HELPS businesses, why can’t I find a non-smoking bar around here?
In order to make football totally safe, you have to remove the “football” part of the game. You won’t be making the game safe, you’ll just be shutting it down, and I don’t think that’s necessary. In order to make “working in a bar” safer, you don’t have to shut all bars down, you only need to make a small change in the rules for running the bar. Football does this all the time, rules around sacking the quarterback, horsecollar tackles, facemasks, late hits, all of them improve the safety of the game while allowing the game to exist. I don’t understand why you want to keep shoving the idea of closing everything down or putting everyone in a bubble.
All that’s happening here is giving bars and restaurants the same smoking status as office buildings and other public buildings.
If you’ve studied economics, you’d remember something about Cartel Theory. The idea being that if all players in the cartel act in concert, reducing output, they will all get higher profits.
If they were not acting together, would you ask why a particular player did not reduce output to make more money? Reducing output is not a positive decision unless all of the other players are following the same plan.
Similarly, going non-smoking all by yourself is not a positive business plan. Remember post-law, smokers are still going out to ALL of the bars and restaurants, along with all the non-smokers that avoided those places pre-law. Go alone, and you will definitely lose part of your customer base, and you will have to spend big bucks on advertising to differentiate yourself to the non’s, just to make that money back.
It’s not about the employees.
If it was, then a group of smokers would be able to get together and open a bar where they all worked. No employees, just the owners. Does the law in your state allow that?
Most of the time, I enjoy nonsmoking restaurants and bars, since I don’t smoke cigarettes. But every now and then I’m in the mood for a good cigar, and it gripes me that there’s no place to have a drink and smoke one even though several bar owners in town smoke cigars and would love to have a cigar bar. Just the power of the free market had turned half the bars and 2/3 of the restaurants in our town nonsmoking before Montana passed its smoking law. I found the law redundant and intrusive.
Well, okay. Just so he doesn’t smoke while he does it.
family owned and operated bars are excempt from the smoking ban in Ohio. Anyone wanting to whine about it at my watering hole will be escorted out and probably banned.
Wow, I didn’t know that. 2/3? That is intrusive and overbearing. It wasn’t enough to have some non-smoking establishments, it wasn’t even enough to have most of the establishments non-smoking–no, every single place, every one, has to be exactly the way I want it. You enjoy a cigarette and a Marlboro, and there is a bar owner who would be happy to accommodate? Tough shit. Every bar everywhere has to be exactly the way I’d like it with regard to smoking. No compromise is possible.
Bottom line: cigarettes and booze are legal products. If an owner wants his establishment to cater to those who enjoy both, that should be up to him. If that environment offends you, don’t go there or work there.
Cheesesteak, I’m not getting your point at all. A member of the cartel doing something out of step with the rest of the group does not serve his interest if that act places him at a disadvantage. Raising my prices to increase my profits won’t work if the rest of the cartel doesn’t raise their prices. The point being, it’s an issue only to the extent I do something that would be itself decrease demand. If non-smoking establishments are the obvious majority preference, stepping out of the norm doesn’t place you at a disadvantage. How could it? People will flock to your establishment. That’s always the insurmountable flaw in the anti-smoking argument, IMO.
I think going non-smoking alone does put a bar at a disadvantage. There are two primary groups of people affected by the change, smokers who go out and non-smokers who don’t go out. The non-smokers who already go out accept the current conditions, I don’t expect them to change their habits appreciably.
The smokers, once they walk into the non-smoking bar, find out about the change. They know they can go next door and smoke, and I fully expect them to walk next door to smoke, and take their friends with them.
The non-smokers are home. They’re not out. They don’t know about the change, it has to be advertised, and that costs money.
Even when they go out, if there’s a smoker in their group, that person will lobby to go to the pro-smoking place. It isn’t easy to tell a friend that you’re making a choice that specifically inconveniences them.
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. It’s not usually a smart decision to dump current customers on the expectation of bringing in new customers from a set of people who are not currently using any services you provide.
I don’t buy it. If the non-smoking preference is so profound and widespread, opening a single non-smoking establishment would pack it to the rafters. And if it did, good for the owners, good for the patrons. That’s their right. That’s how the free market works. A strong preference, one people are willing to pay for, will absolutely be met. Supply chases dollars. Always has, always will. I don’t know why that would be different for bars.
If there are people clamoring to go to bars–if only there were non-smoking ones–then a single one would get filled reasonably quickly. In fact, to further explore the economics of this, you’d rather be the lone non-smoking bar in a sea of smoking bars. There might be slow nights for the other places, but never for you. You’re always the only choice for these people, desperate for a vodka gimlet, hold the smog.
And if a non-smoking bar can’t stay in business, that should tell us something.
BTW, InvisibleWombat’s example seems to bear this out. If enough people want non-smoking places, the market will provide them