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.
I think you mean, "... not applicable to some."
Please say what you mean.
Along with untold millions of baby boomers. who grew up in smoke-infested homes, he is still alive.
You do make a point, though, about never having been in a bar. Many of these anti-smokers have never been in a real barroom in their lives and would literally be scared sh!tless to go into one.
Does it make sense to you that these little farts would want to control the actions of people they don't know, don't want to know and whom they would dislike if they did know?
Bars are full of the same people who wouldn't sit down and shut up when the authority figure (teacher) told them to.
Bars are full of the same people who don't obey the security bureaucrats (police).
Bars are full of tired, sweaty people that actually do the things that keep us going: deliver bread and milk to our stores, repair roofs, build houses, work on motors and engines, fix our toilets and light switches, waiters and waitresses from other joints kicking out the jams on a night off, people from all walks of the working world who only want an ice cold drink and a butt to go with the conversation and laughs.
Now Mike Ditka is prolly a heck of a guy to slug down a few brews with and enjoy a cigar and some banter, but would you want to go out after work (that is, if you went out for drinks, which you don't. Just using your post as a takeoff point) with Tacis and F16Fighter?
No? Neither would anybody else here and we don't want dress wearing imitation men like them telling us what is and is not acceptable behavior either.
It doesn't make sense to me, but it's certainly a common phenomenon. As the mother of a large family, I can't leave my house without hearing from people who think it's their business how many children I have!
I sympathize with smokers, although I didn't when I lived with them, because it did make me sick. Although I prefer to drink (and not smoke) at home rather than in bars, I do understand that many people enjoy smoking. If I as a nonsmoker find the atmosphere of Mike Ditka's restaurant disagreeable, it's my responsibility to go somewhere else, not insist that the world accommodate me.
With this smoke-nazi nonsense, and with the Fairfax County (Virginia) nonsense, I wonder if those in power are really out to close the bars for some reason...
I guess that what I was trying to say is that statistically, second hand smoke hasn't appeared to be a significant problem in the causation of lung disease. This is, of course, despite claims by leftist lawyers to the contrary (and please note that they seem to be getting their paycheck on just that issue - follow the money). Anyway, I'm certain that it is a matter of degree - that is, just smelling smoke isn't going to cause a problem, but constantly breathing a thick cloud of smoke most likely has an association with lung disease. A better approach might have been to require a certain amount of maximum particulate indoor pollution, measured over time in "public" places.
On the other hand, what do we call the "products of combustion" in other circumstances? A: Air pollution. Science backs up the fact that sludge in the air irritates our lungs.
Again, I think its a matter of how much stuff is in the air, along with a person's tolerance to smoke. Having a good air filtration system works wonders with regard to removing smoke from restaurants and bars.
I'm not sure how I got into this :-). I certainly have no interest in regulating other people's smoking!
Smoking discussions are often exciting. :^) I used to smoke myself, but I gave them up (again) just over a year ago. Smelling smoke doesn't bother me, but I've learned that I simply cannot have "just one" cigarette. And I learned that quitting is, how do you say it, "emotionally taxing" at times. I was pretty edgy for a few months last year.
I don't look at this issue as a smoking issue as much as I see it as a property rights issue.
Can't have those free-thinkers sitting around smoking, drinking and plotting the local Stalin's political demise now, can we?
It's been my experience that most smokers will go out of their way to accommodate non-smokers who make a polite request to refrain from smoking. It's the coughers and hand wavers, the insult under the breath folks who get treated rudely, usually rightfully so.
I was thinking that, but most pubs today don't seem like that. I could be quite wrong, of course, since I've only been in a few...
I've only been in a few myself...
Today.
Our family doesn't go out to eat where you can't smoke either. One of the local restaurants went non smoking a few years back. Haven't been there since. One of the local chain of retail stores did away with smoking in their cafeteria. Used to do all our shopping there, especially christmas shopping. Now, its 'in and out, asap'. No doubt we'd still be spending a lot more money there if they still had their old policy. It was kind of nice to take a cigarette/coffee break in the midst of shopping.
The non smoking policy has hurt a lot of restaurants.
Probably a regional thing. Around here, the smoking section is just as busy if not more so than the not smoking. And the smoking section is larger. Sometimes people have to take a table in non smoking and wait for a table in the smoking section to open up, then move to that section.
Ditka is an ass if he thinks his opinion has any scientific weight.
I'm against these far-reaching bans on smoking, but let's not pretend they're anything other than cancer sticks.
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