Have you ever been to a restaurant where smoking is not permitted? Better yet, have you ever been to a government and seen the employess gathered in front of the building smoking? Have you ever walked through one of these groups to get inside the building?
Do you think it's okay for the smokers (who should be able to smoke if they want, I'm not arguing that) to blow smoke on people who are non-smokers? It doesn't even have to be done purposely.
My whole arguement is that smokers infringe on non-smokers. If you are in a bar where smoking is allowed, you should expect to smell like smoke. If you are walking from your car and going into a restaurant that is non-smoking, you shouldn't have to walk through a gauntlet of smokers who are outside having their cigarettes.
Does that explain where I am coming from?
Better yet, have you ever been to a government and seen the employess gathered in front of the building smoking? Have you ever walked through one of these groups to get inside the building?
Yes, and do you know why those people are gathered in the doorway? Because the antismokers drove them form the building using junk science and scare tactics to invoke the rule of law.
I suspect if the smokers had a room, or even a covered patio a few yards away, they wouldn't be standing in front of the doorway.
If you are walking from your car and going into a restaurant that is non-smoking, you shouldn't have to walk through a gauntlet of smokers who are outside having their cigarettes.
I understand completely where you're coming from.
Do you understand that, at this point in time, most smokers don't CARE where you're coming from.
The anti forces have pushed the average smoker from restaurants, bars, workplaces, seperate smoking rooms, doorways (25 feet sound familiar?), and almost into the street. If they do deign to give the smoker a little patio somewhere you can almost guarantee that the patio looks like some type of enclosed pen and there is no cover to keep the elements off the smokers head.
Smokers have been taxed, retaxed, and taxed again all in the name of,"It's for the children!", or, "It's to MAKE you stop.", or, "It's because you don't pay your fair share of your health cost.", or just because someone doesn't like the SMELL!
Smokers have been demonized as murderers, hateful people, people that don't care about their families, unintelligent, low class, etc.
At one point in time there were considerate smokers and inconsiderate smokers. Now I don't think you are going to find too many smokers that will take into consideration your wants and desires unless you force them to by rule of law. They've been pushed as far as they are going to be pushed and until some type of mutual accomodation can be reached they just don't CARE.
In other words, when you leave your house, you expect the world to be as you want it. You are intolerant of anyone that does something that is not in your favor?
I agree.
They should be inside smoking, where smokers had been for the previous several hundred years.
BTW, I don't smoke, neither does my wife. We used to ask for "first available" when there were still smoking sections. Smokers don't bother us as nearly as much as diners that are making so much noise that we can't comfortably converse.