I don't know how many people on here smoke, but in my home state of Michigan, there's currently a bit of fuss about banning smoking in workplaces, including bars, casinos and restaurants.
So far, the bill has only cleared a house committee, so it's pretty far from impacting my life. What worries me the most is that something like 30 other states already have similar bans. That, and people write things like this: Rant Found in Detroit Free Press
That whole rant was pretty much scientifically designed to make me want to punch someone in the face.
getting to the point... really? 30 states? You people let the government take away your right to smoke, in bars, casinos, and restaurants? Three places that are usually explicitly designed to be smoked in? I am in stunned disbelief that the government thinks it can tell a bar how to run its business. I mean, if we were living under an over-controlling, oppressive government, like over in Saudi Arabia, my expectations would be different. But aren't we all capitalists here? Isn't this the land of the free? And aren't we all rugged, independent, free-spirited cowboys? Who love to smoke?
If ever there's a sign that the government is trying to squash our spirits and take over our lives, this is surely it.
So then, you've been warned. First they'll take your cigarettes, then they'll take your guns, and when the brainwashed army soldiers come to lead you away to "communal farms," you'll have no one to blame but yourselves. Well, by the time that happens, they'll have crushed your free-will to the point where you won't even remember what freedom is, so I guess you won't even care.
Posts: 247 | Registered: Feb 2007
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm a hypocrite in that, while I agree with you about not giving up our freedoms, I LOATHE smoking. So I wasn't upset when they banned it in bars and restaurants in Philadelphia.
The argument is that smoking doesn't just affect the person who is doing it.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
First the city I was going to school at banned smoking in public buildings. No one was hurt. Businesses carried on as usual, with perhaps lighter cleaning bills. The bars were still packed.
Then the whole province went that way. See above for details.
Private places should be allowed to permit smoking, but nothing particularly bad has happened as a consequence of banning it in public buildings. I freely confess, as a non-smoker, that I love it. I love not worrying about the cloud of toxins I don't have to march through, or have waft over, or sit in.
Edit: And it's exactly this type of rhetoric that makes me shake my head at America. I don't see it often, but when I do I always feel a little taken aback. You hear about it, but then you encounter it in real life...
It just makes you all seem rather silly. The cowboy, anti-socialist, "next we'll all be Russians!" brand of patriotism is hard not to snicker at. I am, honestly, glad I see it so little, as I prefer to believe it a nasty bit of propaganda cooked up by anti-Americans to make you all look bad.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
Oh, but just so you know DevilDreamt, should smoking ever be made illegal I will be on your side completely. Smoking regulation just doesn't bother me.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't have the time or energy to type a long response about how it is a workplace safety issue at it's core. I'll just find somewhere with a decent summary online...
Here's one:
quote: The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has found that second-hand smoke is up to five times worse in restaurants and bars than it is in the homes of smokers.
So forget the passionate owners, diners, drinkers and smokers:
This issue boils down to a principle even more fundamental to our way of life than entrepreneurial freedom or the freedom to dine enveloped in a noxious fog--the principle that no worker should be forced to choose between a good job and a safe working environment.
quote:A study conducted at the University of California at Berkeley found that working an eight-hour shift in a smoky bar is the equivalent of smoking 16 cigarettes.
“Even in restaurants where there are ‘No Smoking’ sections, patrons and workers are still exposed to secondhand smoke, and no amount of smoke is considered safe,” Eischens said.
We've had long debates here on hatrack, with some smokers claiming that it is ridiculous that it is a workplace safety issue, because the bartenders and waitresses "know what they are getting into" and "are probably smokers themselves". I don't think that those responses hold much water. Employers have a responsibility to provide a safe workplace, period.
If you run a crab fishing boat, the dangers are inevitable, and impossible to eliminate. If you run a bar, secondhand smoke can be eliminated as a job safety risk simply by not allowing it to happen in your bar. Unless you are a die-hard libertarian, you generally have to admit that the state has a responsibility to ensure that workplaces fulfill workplace safety regulations. Why would secondhand smoke be any different?
Posts: 5656 | Registered: Oct 1999
| IP: Logged |
Heather Crowe died last year of lung cancer due to second-hand smoke in the workplace. She was something of an icon, travelling around, making personal appeals to municipalities to ban smoking in public buildings. She was actually pretty successful, and died just weeks before the province of Ontario enacted a ban.
Her case was a landmark. She got a lawyer and sought worker's compensation, and won in full. After that, I would imagine many bar and club owners wondering whether it was more costly to ban smoking or risk having to pay comp. The part that is actually better for businesses is the legislation. If one bar excludes smokers, it's in trouble. If suddenly they all have to, patrons will still be at all of them because there's nowhere else to go.
It's not like it actually stops people smoking. They just go outside and stand on the sidewalk. This creates new problems for pedestrians, but on the whole, I prefer it.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I have no problem with the government regulating tobacco use. That goes for the workplace, public buildings, and taxes on tobacco. Sorry, but I don't smoke and I don't feel like the government is taking away my 'right' by passing some regulations.
Posts: 1813 | Registered: Apr 2001
| IP: Logged |
posted
There's a right to smoke now? In public areas no less? There's gotta be a list of these things somewhere. They should make a bill or something.
Posts: 7593 | Registered: Sep 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
We've been over all of this at least twice before. I'd look it up or reiterate, but these discussions make me tired.
That, and I really don't want to come across as being on the same side as the cowboy yahoos any more than is absolutely necessary.
Posts: 4313 | Registered: Sep 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
Just so you are aware, OP, this website is hardly pro-smoking. There are a few of us, but we're a silent minority as any thread about smoking quickly turns into an anti-smoking pile-on.
My only thought is that smoking clubs should be allowed where it is explicitly stated that entering the establishment for work or pleasure involves the inhalation of second-hand or, preferably, first-hand smoke. Completely removing the ability to smoke indoors in any facility seems Orwellian.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
The anti-smoking "public safety" argument doesn't work. In every case that a city/etc has banned indoor smoking within business establishments serving the public, bar patronage has gone UP by a large amount. Just what we need: more drunks running around in public, more drunks driving.
In every case that a restaurant (or other business serving off-the-street customers) has banned (or has been forced by law to ban) smoking, the customer traffic has increased by a large amount. So anyone who opposes anti-smoking laws is against businesses making more money, is anti-capitalist. Which is probably why despite the public whining of restauranteurs and barkeeps, the anti-smoking laws passed anyways: little private opposition ala "You pass this and we're gonna fund your opponents in the next election." Another case of "...but whatever you do, Brer Fox, please, please, please don' throw me in that briar patch."
quote:You people let the government take away your right to smoke, in bars, casinos, and restaurants? Three places that are usually explicitly designed to be smoked in?
On the whole, Americans in those states have let their government take away other's right to smoke in those places. Whether there's any real difference between the two, there's a big difference in people's perception of the situation.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think the bars and restaurants should have an option of all smoking or all non-smoking. Then the employees can decide where they want to work, and the business can decide what type of clientelle they want.
Here in Texas we won't be able to smoke in bars starting September, except on outdoor patios, which isn't that bad as almost all of the bars I go to have patios, and the weather is almost never extreme enough to keep you indoors.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
Louisiana banned smoking in any restaurant (or bar that serves food) this year. I love it.
And if you really want to smoke, you just go to a bar that doesn't have a kitchen. Or one that doesn't enforce the statute.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
There's the key. If they can't stop venues from serving alcohol 24hrs a day (where it's illegal to sell alcohol after midnight), they can't stop people from smoking in 'em.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Bars could always just follow suit with airports and create communal smoking rooms.
Most of the time, the laws ban smoking from any building of any kind. So this wouldn't work. The law would have to allow something like that from the very start.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
The Texas smoking ban allows for convention halls and airports to have designated smoking rooms with completely seperate ventilation systems, as well as smoking in cigar bars, defined as a bar that gets more than 50% of revenue from tobacco sales. Don't know about the other 29 states.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm a hypocrite on this one. I hate loosing freedoms, but I also hate smoking. So I let this one slide. In fact I wish they would pass a similar law here so I could go to a bar without reeking of smoke afterwards. I don’t think it will happen any time soon in South Carolina; we are in the heart of the tobacco belt.
But as far as motorcycle helmets, and other laws that don't affect people other than the user I am generally against them. If someone chooses not to wear a helmet I don't care, let survival of the fittest take care of them.
Posts: 555 | Registered: Jun 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
That's also an exception to the Louisiana statute. If a restaurant has a smoking section with a completely separate ventilation system, it's alright to smoke in that section.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:But as far as motorcycle helmets, and other laws that don't affect people other than the user I am generally against them. If someone chooses not to wear a helmet I don't care, let survival of the fittest take care of them.
Except that what could have just been a few scratches turns into serious head trauma and tens of thousands of dollars are spent keeping the helmetless rider on life support that costs money, and it's got to come from somewhere.
But I dunno, I think mandating things like this just pushes our legal paradigms into the realm of a "baby sitter" state and that is very unfavorable.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:If a restaurant has a smoking section with a completely separate ventilation system, it's alright to smoke in that section.
Has that not always been the rule?
Well, no. Prior to Jan. 1, 2007, you could smoke in that section regardless of whether they had a separate ventilation system. Basically, the statute meant that if a restaurant wanted to continue to have a smoking section they had to have it separately ventilated. Many, or most, restaurants haven't done this, because the cost can be prohibitive and they've discovered it hasn't cost them any business by not having such a section.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Huh, interesting. I didn't realize the states differed so widely on this.
I'm a little baffled that it is being reported that restaurants and bars are not losing any clientelle due to smoking bans. Personally, I have made the decision almost every time to go to a restaurant I could smoke in, and quit patronizing the restaurants I used to go to that I can't smoke in anymore. Maybe I'm more stubborn than most (and it wouldn't be the first time I heard that).
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by vonk: Huh, interesting. I didn't realize the states differed so widely on this.
I'm a little baffled that it is being reported that restaurants and bars are not losing any clientelle due to smoking bans. Personally, I have made the decision almost every time to go to a restaurant I could smoke in, and quit patronizing the restaurants I used to go to that I can't smoke in anymore. Maybe I'm more stubborn than most (and it wouldn't be the first time I heard that).
You're forgetting the people who have a revulsion to smoke. Once a bar bans smoking alot of those people leave their homes to go visit bars again.
Posts: 14316 | Registered: Jul 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Either you're more stubborn (which I think is likely), or the restaurant gains customers at an equal or faster rate than they lose them, so it's a wash.
Posts: 5462 | Registered: Apr 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
Good points all around. That's kinda why I think the restaurants and bars should be able to choose all smoking or all non-smoking. So the non-smokers can go to bars again without being disgusted and the smokers can enjoy their after dinner stoge without bothering anyone.
Edit: Also, as a smoker and a former waiter, I would much rather wait tables in a smoking restaurant, as, on average, smoking tables tend to tip better, IME.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
I think a restaurant that couldn't get any employees because they all went to the non-smoking restaurants would consider altering it's smoking preference. But I don't think there is a shortage of smoking servers. As I said, many may prefer serving in a smoking restaurant. I know I would.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
It is about time the government protected my right to breathe clean air. Your right to swing your utterly disgusting, foul-smelling cancer-sticks ends at my nose.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm all for letting people drive cars, but I don't think anyone should get to back up to a restaurant and let their tail pipe fill the place with smoke just because they feel like parking there.
Smoke all you want to in your home, or outside, or in your own car - anywhere that your smoke isn't filling up my air space.
I really enjoyed the scene in "Big Trouble" where one restaurant patron politely explains to a table of smokers that he would really like to enjoy his meal without it tasting like an ashtray.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
| IP: Logged |
posted
When I grew up, there was smoking everywhere. California then banned smoking indoors, and I am thrilled. I can breath again!
I'm big on freedom, which is why I support banning smoking, since it infringes on the freedom of nonsmokers to breathe.
Breathing cigarette smoke makes me cough, it stinks, it gives me a headache. Blowing toxins into the air for others to breathe is just incredibly rude. And paradoxically, and so ironically I almost choke, smokers stopped from violating other's rights then decry the loss of a right they never even had.
When my wife and I went to Nevada on a quick vacation last winter, we tried to eat at a nice restaurant that was inside a casino. By the time we got to the restaurant part, we had to just leave. It was gross, it made us cough, it was unpleasant, and it made her nauseated.
Nevada can do what they want, and it's unfortunate if I can't enter a casino at all, but then I don't gamble anyway so it's no big loss. But I'm very glad California has the laws it has on this. One of the few times I approve of California's laws.
Smokers, go ahead and smoke. Just don't do it near me. I like to drink Dr Pepper, but if it made people sick to do it, I'd be a real scumbag to trade their health for my enjoyment.
NOT doing something you like is far less detrimental than being forced to do something you DON'T like.
Posts: 454 | Registered: Mar 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:anywhere that your smoke isn't filling up my air space.
If there were all smoking and all non-smoking restaurants, would you consider the air in the all smoking restaurant to be yours?
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:I think a restaurant that couldn't get any employees because they all went to the non-smoking restaurants would consider altering it's smoking preference.
It is about protecting the employees. We have limits to how much business owners can exploit their employees and place them in danger.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
So we should never allow employers to employ people in dangerous, life-threatening jobs even with full disclosure, proper training and the fully cognizant consent of the employee to perform that task?
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I don't see why this becomes such a huge issue. Both my parents smoke, and when they go out to eat they smoke before they go in or they smoke afterward. They don't seem to mind.
Posts: 3852 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Primal Curve: So we should never allow employers to employ people in dangerous, life-threatening jobs even with full disclosure, proper training and the fully cognizant consent of the employee to perform that task?
What is the proper training that you are suggesting we should give to waiters who work in smoking restaurants?
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
| IP: Logged |
quote:Booze + Tobacco = Double the Pleasure, Double the Fun.
The man speaks the truth.
Also, in a restaurant, the ability to sit back with a couple fingers of bourbon and a smoke after a good meal is a luxury I would be loathe to live without.
ETA:
quote:What is the proper training that you are suggesting we should give to waiters who work in smoking restaurants?
Do you smoke? Do you like it? If yes to both proceed to application. If not, our sister restaurant is hiring two blocks away and they don't allow smoking.
Posts: 2596 | Registered: Jan 2006
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Primal Curve: So we should never allow employers to employ people in dangerous, life-threatening jobs even with full disclosure, proper training and the fully cognizant consent of the employee to perform that task?
What is the proper training that you are suggesting we should give to waiters who work in smoking restaurants?
The only way for someone to make a good decision about whether or not working in the smoking restaurant is good for them is if they understand all of the facts as they currently stand about second hand smoke and smoking in general. My proposed training would involve instructional videos, pamphlets-- whatever-- that the employee would have to sign showing he'd seen/read them and understood them completely. It's the same type of thing you have to go through if you work at a job with dangerous chemicals or hazardous conditions, only it'd be directed at potential employees in a smoking-only establishment.
Posts: 4753 | Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged |
posted
I much prefer my meals out to not include smoke. It irritates my eyes and tends to make me cough. If you want to smoke, I don't see why it's so hard to do it outside where it can waft away in open air and not get caught inside.
Posts: 2867 | Registered: May 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
In Georgia restaurants can allow smoking only if they are willing to remain 18+. That is, if you aren't old enough to buy your own cigarettes to smoke, you won't be forced to inhale someone else's. In Connecticut it's been illegal to smoke in restaurants for a while, and I always find myself unpleasantly surprised when I go into a restaurant somewhere else and smell the cigarette smoke. While I respect the right of people to smoke, I also feel that people should respect my right not to breathe it in. I'm asthmatic and cigarette smoke is a big trigger for me.
Posts: 1547 | Registered: Jan 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by kojabu: I much prefer my meals out to not include smoke. It irritates my eyes and tends to make me cough. If you want to smoke, I don't see why it's so hard to do it outside where it can waft away in open air and not get caught inside.
It's a property rights issue. If a bar chooses to allow smoking neither you nor the state of a legitament right to forbid it.
If you want to eat at the place without smoke, I don't see why it's so hard to go to a place that doesn't allow smoking.
Full disclosure: I do not smoke, nor do I own stock in any cigarette company.
Posts: 413 | Registered: Apr 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
For those who live in states where there's no law prohibiting smoking in bars: how many establishments voluntarily ban smoking? Before the smoking ban was enacted over here I can't remember a single bar I went to where the air wasn't thick with smoke. And this in spite of the great majority of the population being non-smokers. The restaurants were a bit better, but mostly the only concession to the non-smokers was that the smokers were put in a not very well defined corner in the room. It's possible that now when the dangers of second-hand smoking have been so generally recognised, the percentage of establishment willing to voluntarily ban smoking has increased. However I am sceptical that a voluntary division into smoking and non-smoking establishment would yield a large crop of non-smoking bars. Cigarettes is just another thing a bar can sell and make money on and I doubt many would forfeit the profit if they had a choice.
Posts: 896 | Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by kojabu: I much prefer my meals out to not include smoke. It irritates my eyes and tends to make me cough. If you want to smoke, I don't see why it's so hard to do it outside where it can waft away in open air and not get caught inside.
It's a property rights issue. If a bar chooses to allow smoking neither you nor the state of a legitament right to forbid it.
Pff. You would not object to regulating the 'property right' of a factory to belch sulphur dioxide into the air upwind of your house. Property rights are not some mystic, unchangeable sacred covenant handed down by unerring scribes from Mount Sinai; they are whatever we happen to agree they are, and can manage to enforce.
Posts: 10645 | Registered: Jul 2004
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by vonk: Huh, interesting. I didn't realize the states differed so widely on this.
I'm a little baffled that it is being reported that restaurants and bars are not losing any clientelle due to smoking bans. Personally, I have made the decision almost every time to go to a restaurant I could smoke in, and quit patronizing the restaurants I used to go to that I can't smoke in anymore. Maybe I'm more stubborn than most (and it wouldn't be the first time I heard that).
I think it has to do with it being a ban. If you refuse to go to a bar that's non-smoking, and suddenly every bar in the city, or state, or province, is non-smoking, you rapidly run out of bars to go to. At that point, you have to decide if you want to enjoy going out at all or if you want to continue boycotting everyone.
The other option some places went for around here was to go private. A minimal "membership fee," such as what you'd pay for cover anyway, is put in place, the bar or club goes private, and bingo! smoking is allowed. Mind, I'm not sure if that loophole has been gone after yet. It seems reasonable enough to me, as long as the employees are aware of the risks.
Posts: 2849 | Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
