Posted on 01/10/2003 7:41:00 PM PST by Max McGarrity
Secondhand smoke "might make your hair smell," but it's not a proven health risk, Bears-coach-turned-restaurant-owner Mike Ditka said Thursday, leading the charge against a proposed restaurant smoking ban in Chicago.
With a cigar in one hand and a drink in the other, Ditka said his steelworker father was living proof that it's baloney for medical experts to claim that exposing a restaurant employee to an eight-hour shift's worth of secondhand smoke is the equivalent of smoking a half a pack of cigarettes.
"My dad smoked four packs of Luckies from the time he was 12 until the time he was 60. He lived to 80. He died of hardening of the arteries. He didn't die from what smoking caused. He worked in the steel mill where every morning, you woke up and there was half an inch of soot on the cars," Ditka said.
"People who have survived in industrial areas of our country late into their 80s and 90s have inhaled more smoke than all the smoking in the world can give you. I find it hard to believe that people try to shove the secondhand smoke theory down your throat because I don't believe it. I don't believe it even hurts you. It might make your hair smell a little bit, but that's about it."
Ditka said he has nothing against Ald. Edward M. Burke (14th), the City Council's leading anti-smoking crusader. He simply believes the restaurant business would "suffer tremendously" if Burke and Health Committee Chairman Ed Smith (28th) persuaded their colleagues to ban smoking in restaurants and bars.
"These people who are popping off and throwing their weight around better open up their eyes and understand that you've got freedoms in America. If you don't want to come in this restaurant, don't come in. If you don't want to go where people smoke, don't go. They run the City Council. Let the people down here run the restaurants," Da Coach said.
Reminded that smoking has been banned for years in California restaurants and bars, Ditka said: "That's fruits and nuts. That's what they are. A lot of liberals. . .. All the do-gooders in the world. The people in California who abolished smoking are the same people who want to legalize marijuana. Come on. Give me a break."
At a Health Committee meeting earlier this week, restaurant owners attempted to slow the anti-smoking steamroller.
They warned that a Chicago-only restaurant smoking ban would send customers fleeing to the suburbs and prompt conventions to move elsewhere. They argued the ban would create an enforcement nightmare, with confrontations between tip-seeking servers and their customers.
Mayor Daley sympathized, called for more City Council hearings on the controversy and backed away from his earlier endorsement of a restaurant smoking ban.
On Thursday, restaurant employees held a news conference at Ditka's Restaurant, 100 E. Chestnut, to reiterate those arguments and pile on a few more.
"This city is rich in character--full of taverns, neighborhood joints, steakhouses and family restaurants. A smoking ban would completely expunge that character. It would absolutely reduce this city to another generic, dime-a-dozen, two-bit town," said Glenn Garlisch, a waiter at the Chicago Chop House, 60 W. Ontario.
That should read "NO accomodation for liberty IMHO.
My dad's side of the family has lots of lung problems so I quit smoking, after becoming a bit hooked on it in college. The only time I still crave a cigarette is when I'm in a bar, which is not that often. But when I do go out with old friends and have a drink, I'm likely to take the risk one cigar may cause. But the thing is, it's my choice and I'll live with it.
Why do I feel that way? Maybe it's the a--hole sitting in the booth next to me in the smoking section waving his hands and coughing as I light up. This whole debate is out of hand and the silence of people like me is what is fueling the anti's. I wish I knew the answer.
Bingo. The "enjoyment" of the dining experience is the argument advanced by both sides. Neither ardent smoker nor non-smoker apparently can enjoy their meal in the environment preferred by the other. So, what should be done?
For the person who prefers liberty to tyranny, the answer is simple. Where you are the host, you set the rules. Where you are the guest, you abide the rules of the host or you remove yourself as a guest.
Under the capitalist system we have buyers and sellers. Buyers and sellers implies the existence of private property. If you can't figure who is the host and who is the guest, it is because you lack an understanding of liberty and property.
Two points:
1.) The bars I hang around in and have drunk(?) in for the last forty years do not allow ten year olds to belly up for a cold one.
2.) All normal adults avoid places that label themselves as "Family Restaurants" like the plague. What sane person could enjoy a meal surrounded by ankle bitters and little Yawehs?
My mother was a waitress and didn't allow us to eat out with them until we were in our mid-teens.
After all, childhood is for children and adulthood is for adultery. Er, anyhow, treating us as if we were all ten year olds is not gonna work.
Way to go Max.
40 or 50 years ago you never heard of anyone being allergic to cigarette smoke. I am sure there were some, but after 30 years of being brainwashed by TV , news media, and the Cigarette Nazi's, the number of people allergic to cigarette smoke has probably risen 5000%.
Because as I stated in my post, the lack an understanding of liberty and property. Ask any of them for a definition of liberty and they most likely will not answer.
LOL -- Now here's a great reason for the advocacy of smokers...
...So if NOT for cigarettes, some smokers might merely be doped-up zoned-out druggies instead -- admittedly far less a nuisance in restaurants than having a Bette Davis-type billowing clouds of noxious plumes onto my meal from the next table.
Oh, but I guess that's THE version of "liberty" for some posters here.
So my little turnip, you are in a dance club, and what the music is too loud, something OSHA says is decibel hurting, and you being the stupid little statist wimp that you are, support the local, state, and federal governments forcing them to have to turn down the volume?
Ditto bright dance lights, obscuring dance floor fog.
Not that a paranoid little bootlick like yourself has gotten out to a club in the last 45 years. Cough, cough, my ears, my ears! My eyes, my eyes! I cant see the dance floor, Mommy, take me home!
Even FR is not immune to the left hand rising of the Bell Curve. For example, I give you Tacis.
This thread is about private property rights and how they are being destroyed by junk science and those who accept that junk science without question. That's what set me off.
Hmm... my solution if I'm in a club which is too loud is to simply wear earplugs. Too bad those clubs don't sell them--they'd have a ready-made market.
...So if NOT for cigarettes, some smokers might merely be doped-up zoned-out druggies instead -- admittedly far less a nuisance in restaurants than having a Bette Davis-type billowing clouds of noxious plumes onto my meal from the next table.
How many tons of noxious fumes are dumped into the air we all have to breathe every time one of your "fighters" takes off? Do you have any idea? According to the Department of Transportation, a 747 takeoff dumps the pollution equivalent of about 3 million cigarettes into the atmosphere. Don't you care that you're poisoning "the children" as well as everyone else on earth who has to breathe? After all, you can CHOOSE to fly a plane, we HAVE to breathe.
Oh, but I guess that's THE version of "liberty" for some posters here.
My "version of liberty," which happens to be the ONLY correct one, is to make your own choices. If you don't want to be around smokers when you're eating, don't go to restaurants that welcome them. If you own a restaurant and don't want to cater to smokers, put a sign outside stating your own policy; if you don't want to work where smokers congregate, don't apply for a job there. What could be simpler or more American than free choice and the free market?
How many tons of noxious fumes are dumped into the air we all have to breathe every time one of your 'fighters' takes off?...Don't you care that you're poisoning 'the children' as well as everyone else on earth who has to breathe?"
LOL -- Max, you are some piece o' work..."The children" crack really hurt...
Hey -- perhaps researchers some day soon Northrup and Boeing can invent tobacco-powered jet engines -- then we'd all be happy.
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