If you want me to side with you regarding smoking in restaurants and bars, I’m sorry but I can’t.
I’m 56 years old. I’ve spent most of my life going out to restaurants and bars in smoke filled rooms. Even when smoking and non-smoking sections were set up, the smoke would waft over into the non-smoking area.
Do I think there is a real danger of people inhaling second hand smoke coming down with cancer? Let’s just say I’m not convinced of that at all. What I am convinced of is that I couldn’t really enjoy the evening out having to endure someone else’s smoke and knowing I’d stink to high heavens upon returning home.
I’ve gone home from work thousands of times, taken a shower, put on a new set of clean clothes and gone out to eat or to a bar. Three or so hours later I’d return home with clothes that stunk so much I could smell them from two rooms away.
After hanging those clothes out to air for two to four days, I generally had to have them cleaned again. It was a real pain in the ass.
I don’t blame smokers for not liking the new laws. And it is getting to the point that I am angry at some of the new laws that are being considered.
Smoking outside should be okay. Smoking in your own care should be okay. Smoking in your own home should be okay.
If you want my vote to support you in those areas, you’ve got it. I try not to be unreasonable about this, but I’m sure smokers think I’m very unreasonable. I understand that.
You take care.
“”What I am convinced of is that I couldn’t really enjoy the evening out having to endure someone else’s smoke...””
***********
So you are in agreement to strip away a business persons ‘private business’ right to run their operation as they wish?
Cigarettes, Pipes and Cigars are legal; if a business person wants to cater to those individuals who partake in tobacco, why are you giving the government the power to restrict their trade? Will you subsidize them, through taxes, for business lost?
If a business has a ‘Smoking Permitted’ sign on the door - don’t go in - you have no right to be catered to in any establishment.
I don’t like screaming kids - I don’t go to Chuck E Cheese - and I don’t have a right to pass legislation to ban kids from Chuck E Cheese because I am disgusted by the atmosphere there...and it could be a cause of elevated blood pressure which could cause a heart attack...
Gabz - Thanks for the Ping
Tobacco is a legal substance. Either ban it or allow individuals to choose what bars and restaurants they want to frequent. Leave it up to the marketplace.
The problem is once you give the inch, and allow a ban in a business.
Then it’s on to apartments.
Then own house, and if you have kids they take them away for child endangerment.
Then another wack-o group comes along, and does the same thing about meat/religion/guns.