Thread: My Stupid Fucking State Just Passed A Smoking Ban

Originally Posted by Kozzle

Ok so wait...you're telling me that non-smokers have to be restricted in choices as to WHERE to go opposed to EVERYONE being able to go ANYWHERES except smokers just have to smoke outside?

What I'm telling you is that if a person owns a bar or restaurant, that person should be the one to decide whether to allow smoking by their guests. Just as when you own a home, you get to decide whether to allow smoking by guests in your house. Yes, this would mean that there would be some places where smoking is allowed, and thus where non-smokers (at least the ones who are bothered by smoke) wouldn't want to go. So what? Bars and restaurants are private property. They are privately-owned businesses, not public services. If they want to allow smoking, the ought to be able to even if some people would be unwilling to patronize the establishment as a result. They should be allowed to cater to whatever segment of the public that they want to cater to (be it wide or narrow), not forced to create an environment in which the largest possible number of people will be willing to eat/drink. You don't have some inalienable right to have the government maximize your restaurant choices by banning anything you don't like in a restaurant.

Your problem seems to be that you think that the #1 Most Important Issue here is guaranteeing maximum restaurant choice for everyone; preventing any situation where a person might be dissuaded from entering certain restaurants. I don't see guaranteeing maximum restaurant choice for non-smokers as a particularly important legislative goal. The fact that there are some restaurants where smoking is allowed, and where non-smokers are therefore unwilling to go, doesn't strike me as a problem that needs to be solved by government intervention. It doesn't strike me as a problem at all.

Originally Posted by Kozzle

On top of that you blame people for inhaling second hand smoke form someone else's lit cigarette?

wow....

Okay, let's construct a hypothetical scenario here. You're walking down the street and you say to yourself "I want something to eat" (or "I want a drink"). You see a restaurant (or bar) and walk in. Stepping through the door, you see that there's a haze of cigarette smoke in the air, the place smells like cigarettes, and there are people smoking cigarettes. At this point you may suspect that you have entered an establishment where the owner has decided to allow smoking. You have two choices: You can say "Doesn't bother me" and go take a seat, or you can say "Uh-oh, I don't want to be exposed to second-hand smoke" and turn around, leave, and walk down the street to an establishment with a "No Smoking" sign on the door (which, as I pointed out above, are the majority of establishments). No-one is forcing you to choose either of these two options; it is entirely up you. It is entirely your own decision. Now, if you choose to go sit down and breath in that smoke when you could have just easily turned around and left, what on earth would possibly make you think that you are justified in blaming the smokers for exposing you to that smoke? It may have come from their cigarettes, but YOU chose to go sit down in it when you could have just as easily chosen not to!

I don't "blame" people for inhaling second-hand smoke; but I recognize that anyone who is being exposed to second-hand smoke is being exposed to it because they willingly chose to expose themselves to it when they could just as easily have gone somewhere else. They are responsible for their exposure to that smoke. They said to themselves "I will go sit in this smoke-filled room even though I could leave instead". As I said above, the smokers didn't drag them into the place and tie them to a chair and force them to breath in the smoke. What is so hard to understand about this? So I have no sympathy for people who willingly go into smoke-filled rooms that they didn't have to go into, and then try to pretend that they've somehow been victimized by those evil smokers. Second-hand smoke in bars/restaurants is something that people expose themselves to by choice, and by choice alone.