You can enjoy a nice meal any time you wish - if you don't care for smoking, eat where it is not permitted, but don't dictate whether I can permit it in my establishment or not. Your freedom to enjoy your meal doesn't get to usurp my freedom to choose how to cater to my clientele.
No one wants to go to a bar and smell like an ash tray.
No one? Seriously, you have spoken to everyone that has ever gone into a bar? I seriously doubt it.
It’s not the nanny state that attacked smoking. It’s everyone else.
If that wee true, and it isn't, there would never have been a need for such laws.
If you want to smell and significantly reduce your life span, have at it. Don’t expect me to allow you to smoke that crap around me. That’s not a nanny state.
Yes it is, because you are telling me how to run my business. No one has forced you to enter any establishment, nor are you held captive in one that has an atmosphere you don't like.
I’m sure most business owners would enact those no smoking regulations on their own.
Then why didn't they? No, if you look at news archives of various paces working on smoker bans you will find many owners stating they would like to be smoke-free, but since most of their customers were smokers they would lose business. When we were fighting the smoking ban in Delaware one of the most vocal restaurant/bar owner opponents to it was a guy that had gone smoke-free on his own. He didn't want the ban because he felt he would lose his niche of being the only smoke-free place in his town.
Bars that allow smoking nowadays are usually dives.
You don't get out much, do you?
I’m in my mid 20s. I used to go out all the time before I got a serious girlfriend. You know who went to the smoke den bars? Underage kids who couldn’t get into the popular bars. Is it a coincidence that all the popular bars are smoke free environments, and the hole in the walls smell like cancer? You don’t have have the freedom to create a nuisance. I could care less if you allowed smoking in your establishment. I guarantee young people wouldn’t walk thru that door.
Too bad I was never a smoker. I always envy the ability to take a break ay work every fifteen minutes.