We were all scuba diving the other week and I got a great kick out of smoking on the beach. We were scowled at and I turned to my buddy and said "Man, I want to quit someday but the way it pisses folks off now makes me laugh my ass off!"
Here in Mass, they just banned smoking in ALL business establishments. I don't know if it is going to be ratified but the damn Mass. Congress did vote it in. Now, I own a business here. We smoke in the back room. The customers don't get exoposed to it. It's not that I really care but you have to respect your paying customers. My business is not a restaurant.
Well, the only thing I can say is that I WILL NOT COMPLY! Who the hell do they think they are, telling me what to do in my own private property. If they want me to not smoke in my own business, then they can come with the police and arrest me by force.
I am sure that the next thing will be that cigarettes cause global warming and everyone must stop smoking to protect the earth.
Damn nazis.
I'm in Massachusetts also----good luck with the idiots that run this state.
I've just about had it!
Arioch wrote: "Well, the only thing I can say is that I WILL NOT COMPLY! Who the hell do they think they are, telling me what to do in my own private property. If they want me to not smoke in my own business, then they can come with the police and arrest me by force."
Unfortunately that's the direction it's going in. The laws are now increasingly being written with provisions for fines AND/OR jail time. Plus, I imagine it's pretty automatic in most cases that if you won't pay a fine you get jail time.
We already know that some higher level criminals are being released early due to prison crowding in order to keep inmates in longer who have lost their "good time" by being caught with tobacco. No one's done any research on how many of course: the Antis would certainly never fund it and the tobacco companies don't want to admit that criminals smoke in the first place.
Arioch also wrote: "I am sure that the next thing will be that cigarettes cause global warming and everyone must stop smoking to protect the earth."
Try going to cigarettelitter.com (or .org?) and you'll find a pseudo-scientific piece of nonsense that makes it sound like smokers are threatening all life in the ocean (which would of course then threaten all life on earth.) What makes the science "pseudo" is that when you actually compute the rough volume of the world's oceans and apply their figures you'd find that every cigarette butt smoked for the next 80,000 years or so would need to be dumped into the ocean and never biodegrade for the threat to exist.
Of course that sort of little exaggeration is stock in trade for the Antis.
:/
Michael J. McFadden
You have proven a point I've been trying to stress on many of these threads.......the smoking bans cover ALL businesses, not just bars and restaurants - yet the rest of the private businesses rarely get mentioned in articles regarding the bans.
Also, and nothing against you or any other small private business owner, the smoke police generally don't bother with any businesses other than bars and restaurants.