Chicago is getting ready to pass a smoking ban in all public places, and it's going to kill businesses. When those businesses die off, who's going to make up the shortfall in tax revenues? EVERYONE WILL.
Decisions such as these should be left up to the individual business owners, whether or not they want to permit smoking in their businesses. If I walk into a restaurant and there's a smoke cloud overhead, I don't go bitch to the government to ban smoking, I find another restaurant.
What is wrong in this country, when the "free market system" we supposedly live with is wrought with over-regulation and big-daddy-government?
What is wrong is that the country has become fascist while the citizens sleep. They keep electing slugs who use freedom as a feel good phrase and the constitution and our founding principles as toilet paper.
It is the fault of the people, no one else.
It will harm restaurants, because the smokers can opt to go home where smoking (at this time) is still allowed. Offices and factories will actually see productivity gains, very slight ones, because "smoke breaks" are generally costly to labor output.
My concern is the bigger picture. This ban represents a small nick in the fabric of freedom itself, in this country, and will no doubt turn into a large rip.