If that's your best argument, you had best sit this one out. Godwin's law has been satisfied in reply number......that's right, one!
I personally find smoking utterly repulsive - especially since I'm highly allergic to cigarette smoke. I frequent bowling alleys on their smoke-free nights and plenty of smoke-free bars. Bars that do allow smoking will only see me late on Tuesday night, for example - basically when nobody's around. Businesses have found that banning smoking is a good thing for business, not a bad thing, and all the smokers' whining isn't going to change that.
I don't really care what smokers do as long as it's not around me. I don't seek out smoke-filled places - I make most every attempt to avoid it. I don't care what people do in their own homes, but I would be perfectly fine with a public smoking ban.
What most of us here know is that it has nothing to do with smoking.
1.)The right of private property owners to regulate the legal consumption of a legal product on their own property.
2.) The absolute refusal of the anti-smoking coalition to allow smokers a place to gather with like minded people.
Shouldn't there be a "right to choose" when it comes to entering a smoking vs a non-smoking barroom? If 23% of American adults are smokers, why can't a few bars and/or restaurants find a niche catering exclusively to smoking adults?
Aren't all of our associations as free men and women supposed to be voluntary and not coerced by gub'mint?
And Godwin's Law is BS put out by the same crowd that propagates crap like , "You can't fight City Hall." One has to take the situation as it rises and when it comes to smoke gnatzies it's usually a case of, "If the jack boot fits..."
The Godwin's law thing seems to be uniformly rearing it's idiotic head the last couple of days.
Your hive should really make a greater effort to appear unconnected to one another.
You're uninformed. Smoking Bans have NOTHING to do with "smoking." They're about control and the "managing" of the proletariat (that means we tax-paying scum) by The Elite. Been in America long? Do you know ANY American history? What was America founded on, and why did we break with England? Overtaxed and underrepresented! Remember the Boston Tea Party? Well, imagine that with tobacco...a LEGAL, taxed substance, as was tea in it's day.
Choose a legal, taxed, adult "vice" that you have. Like gambling? How about a game of Bingo at Church? Like to have a beer on the weekend with your friends while you watch the game? Alcohol is BAD for you. For shame! How about a burger? Trans Fat City, Baby! Shame on you for not watching your health for the rest of us innocent bystanders. You might fall on us and cause bodily harm because you don't adhere to the "standards of emaciation" imposed on all of society!
How about driving while talking on your cellphone? Ever do that? How about that time you forgot to put on your seatbelt? How do you feel about helmet laws? Do they protect you, or the other guy from hurting himself? And who cares? Thin the herd if people want to be stupid, but it should be up to the HERD as to what they want to do!
Now imagine that we all HATE you because of your CHOICE to do as you will in a FREE country...while all of your ADULT choices are legal and taxed! You pay and pay for that vice! :)
P.S. I don't smoke. But this imposition of the denial of rights by one "class" of people (Smoke Gnatzies) on another (Everyday People) irks me to no end.
As long as it's the businesses that are going smoke free as a result of the owner/manager's decision, I have no problem with it.
When the government get's involved determining what legal commodity can, or cannot, be banned from a pribate establishment, I have a problem with that.
"...but I would be perfectly fine with a public smoking ban."
Why? In your post you make the case that the free market is working just fine, why the need to utilize government force to enact a ban?