That statement is so old, it's time for an oil change:
Smoking in a restaurant is like peeing in a pool.
If you want to put up a sign saying "Peeing is permitted" over your own pool, why should anyone else care?
The air in restaurants is changed 35,000 times a year; the water in pools once, if that. Only an idiot could fail to see the difference.
My point exactly. If you want to smoke your demon weed in the confines of your own house, or piss in your own pool, go right ahead.
But if you think you can build a swimming pool, open it to the public, charge admission, and then put up a sign saying "Pissing Permitted" or "Pissing zone at east end of the pool", then you have another think coming, courtesy of the county health department.
How is this different from keeping disgusting, unsafe tobacco smoke out of restaurants and bars? Private homes are not the same as restaurants and other public accomodations. This has been settled law for decades.
No serious Republican challenges the right of local governments to regulate filth in public swimming pools or spoiled food in restaurants. Nor should they object when the public decides they are sick of having smoke junkies polluting the air in bars and restaurants.
If you disagree, based on your own weak-willed dependence on nicotine, then maybe you ought to leave the Republicans and join your fellow drug addicts in the Libertarian Party.
-ccm