In Albuquerque, NM the city council is voting on a ban on smoking in all businesses, and 20 feet from any business, even outside. (Much like in CA I believe.) This includes bars, everything. The first debate was that the city council has no business with protecting public health, which was true and dropped, but somehow it's back. The theory is that the ban is protecting those who don't wish to be around it, and protecting workers in their places of business from second-hand smoke.

The advocates put up some billboards with shock value, saying bartenders are twice as likely to get lung cancer, etc etc...But it's the individual's choice to work somewhere that cigarette smoke will be present, am I wrong!? I don't know one bartender that didn't expect smoke in that environment. On that note, it is also the individuals right to not eat at restaurants where there is smoking, it's all a choice. Public buildings or places one is required to go to for one reason or another is totally different.

Studies have shown that restaurants lose business BIG TIME, especially bars. I for one, as a smoker, will just take a ten minute trip over the river so I can have a smoke when I go out. Also, there are indian reservations that won't be affected, and the bars there will boom in business.

Main point, it's unconstitutional to tell a business owner that they cannot allow smoking in their establishment, something that is legal, period. What do you think??

I agree that it is not OK to ban something that is completely legal. I also feel that non-smokers also have a right not to be forced to breathe in second hand smoke. I am not a smoker, but a lot of my friends are. I also realize that there is going to be a lot of smoke when I go out to clubs and bars with my wife and friends, it is just something I put up with. I just make sure I wash my clothes when I get home. Again, I don't feel gov't needs to try and protect people from their own stupidity. Take drinking for instance. If you drink every day you are just as likely to develop health problems as if you smoke everyday, but it is legal. Smokers should have the right to smoke, so long as it does not force non-smokers to breathe it in. The only side I see from your post is something that happens where I work. During lunch all the smokers gather right outside the door when it is cold, and you have to walk through a cloud of smoke to get inside, which is kind of annoying, but is not going to kill me. I guess I am just a little against smoking because I have seen 3 close family members die as a result, so I guess that makes me biased. I do understand that people have a right to smoke as well, this is the USA.

The Constitution is no longer worth the paper it is printed on. What right does government have to inject in the business owners decision on this issue?

One of the freedoms that we SHOULD still have today is the ability to associate with like minded people. I fully support no-smoking sections, and even smoke free establishments (voluntary by owner), but if a bar owner wants to cater to smokers with his/her privately owned establishment, then by what right does a politician have to deny that person?

I can understand banning indoor smoking inside regular businesses, where people who work there have no other choice.

Over zealous lawmakers are such complete hippocrites(sp?), they place exorbitant tax on a legal product, then sue the product manufacturer in the name of public health. They then collect BILLIONS for anti smoking treatment and education programs, and spend it on pork programs within their state.

200 years and counting and the Constitution is still going strong. I am not a big fan of Constitution bashing.

I also do not see why the city of Anywhere should be restricted from passing a law that they deem in the best interest of public safety.

Smoking does not only affect the smoker and I do not see smoking bans as a Constitutional issue.

Laws that make individuals wear helmets on motorcycles or seat belts in cars are better targets of criticism in my book.

I was a bartender in California and I expected second hand smoke as part of my work environment. And I think the state wide ban applies to some pretty strange places. Can you imagine a dive bar without a restaurant filled with alternative characters in a smoke free light. I've been there, these toughs hang out by the exits of the place and smoke.

The city of Albuquerque in the end will probably not go through with it because they will drive tax revenues to the city limits where smokers will go. That is why CA ended up with a state wide ban.

I as a smoker feels that I am being taken away a right I have. Smoking is not illegal. I think maybe a solution is to post outside your resturant there is smoking or not. If you don't smoke go there. If you smoke go to the one that does allow smoking. Why should owners of places be forced to have a no smoking place if they have no problem with smoking. It should be a choice that owners have. Not be forced to do.

That's funny.

Constitution bashing? I don't even know what you're trying to say here...

Public safety? Do you mean public health? If someone was so worried about second hand smoke, why would they voluntarily choose to be around it? It is a person's choice to go to a bar or restaurant, no one forces them to be there. There are non-smoking sections, there are other restaurants, or (oh my god) they could stay home and cook!

Like I said, public places are non-smoking because people must go to them from time to time.

This is definitly a Constitutional issue! Personal rights, business owners' rights, are on the line here. This could go hand in hand with the Third Amendment, though it is written about housing soldiers, it still states, "without the consent of the Owner".

If you owned a restaurant and found that you got more business if you allowed smoking, how would you feel if the government butted in and said you couldn't do it anymore??

I won't be surprised if they start banning smoking in homes. There's no difference, none at all...Owning a home is just as likely as owning a restaurant. Think about it, really think about it. Restaurant owners can refuse service to anyone, this is their right as the business owner...Maybe we should take that away too and just do away with private property altogether and become a Communist state...That might fancy you.

Actually, when my town banned public smoking, most of our bars and restaurants noted either no change, or an increase in business. We've experienced very little objection to it, even from smokers themselves. Out of a town of 16,000 people, only 5 turned up at the Board of Health meeting about it, of which, 3 were in favor of the ban. Even I, being a smoker, don't consider it a major imposition, or an infringement on my rights to have to take my smoking outside, away from the general public. Just because I choose to smoke, doesn't mean I have the right to impose my "drug" on others who happen to be around me. If you want to have a place you can go and still smoke, in most locations, private clubs are exempted from the ban. You're perfectly free to find one in your area that accomidates smokers, or even set one up yourself. Just let me know when it opens, and I'll become a charter member.

It seems Chicago is having this same debate: No-smoking bid inflames restaurants

The restaurant owners and some staff seem quite a bit more concerned than those you mention in MA, Stefan.

Thank you to all these supposed well-wishing legislators, but I can take care of myself. Most states already have requirements that their restaurants have a non-smoking section. I think to ask anything more is detrimental to business and to individual property rights.

To go to one extreme or the other (all smoking or all non-smoking) is not the answer. Why is a balance between smokers and non-smokers not as obvious a solution to these government nannies as it is to me?

It's legal to operate a chemical factory, why can't you operate a chemical factory in a residential area? Just because you want to do something legal everywhere doesn't mean you can. Why can't a teacher drink gin and carry a sawwed off-shotgun in a school?

Yes, RU and smoking is still legal. What's your point?

As long as there are tenuous analogies floating around in here . . .

It is legal to urinate but does that mean that urinating should be done in the public drinking supply?

I like not breathing second hand smoke. It injures me when I do so. Why do I have to be subjected to it?

The point is you don't have to be Eeyore. You have a choice to go into a non-smoking restaurant or a non-smoking section of a restaurant.

It should remain optional. Restaurants are currently required by most states to require a non-smoking section. I am not willing to concede non-smokers anything further.

(In case anyone cares, I have NEVER smoked a cigarette in my life)

I've never smoked in my life either, but I'm all for banning smoking in public places. The non smoking areas don't solve the problem. The smoke from the smoking section comes drifting into the non smoking section. Who wants their clothes to smell like smoke every time they go out to eat?

Madtown

If you go to a place to eat most of them are fast food places. you make not smell like smoke but now you smell like fired grease.

I guess I have some great choices. Cigarette smoke, grease or staying home. My home is not smoke free when I do the cooking. I have two cooking speeds. Burn or incinerate!

Madtown

Madtown you are the greatest! I think as long as you don't have the older sisters there your house is just fine!

These aren't public places, they are privately owned and operated.

This is what gets me so angry about it.

Smoking and non-smoking sections reduce direct smoke in your face. Unless a building has separate ventilation systems, the air will be mixed during recirculation.

This is a tough issue for me. Civil rights are extremely important and overrun in this country. This needs to be corrected. However, there does need to be laws to prevent others actions from infringing on the rights of others. Where does smoking fit in this debate?

I have observed that the country is much better off since the banning of smoking in many places. It used to be impossible to find a public place free of smoke. I can relate to how smokers feel now. They are wishing they could find a place where they can smoke and I used to be wishing I could find a place where I could go where it was smoke free. More people are willing to go to public places because of it. We know this is true as smoking bans have increased business. Smoking bans have increased a community's choices rather than decreased them.

Smoking is a pollution problem. We should have pollution laws as you can not individualize the air we breath. We should have smoking bans for the same reason we have laws preventing the discharge of contaminants into the air by large plants.

Having free choice to allow smoking in a place of business: a hospital, a stadium, a bar, or a restaurant has not worked. It is bad business but the marketplace can not see it. I am not sure what to call this but I will call it "gradualisim". When something bad happens in small steps, people are willing to put up with it. "I want to eat the good steak but I have to put up with some smoking to do it. I guess I can." "I do not want to work around smoke but I need the job. I guess it will not be so bad."

Should we allow pollution ? Would it support libertarianism to have the choice whether to buy electricity from a company which pollutes or not.

I still have lingering doubts about a complete ban. If smokers really desire a public place where they could smoke, why not. How to do this without sliding back to the problems we had before...

So where does this anti-smoking bill end?

If I run a business out of my home, say an accounting firm, can I not smoke in my home?

If I rent an apartment above a business (say I live above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley), can I not smoke there? After all, I am within 20 feet.

If a taxi cab or a semi drives by while someone is smoking, who is responsible? The smoker, or the business owner? Taxi cabs and semis are businesses, after all.

On could argue that removing the right for smokers to smoke where they want is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act. After all, smoking has been proven to be addictive, and an addiction is a recognized medical condition. It could be equated to seeing-eye dogs. They are allowed in public places because the blind need them to function. Well, smokers need smoke. Otherwise, they get cranky, irritable, and fat.

I know it seems I'm being rather extreme, but it is for a reason. This seems to be cut-and-dry to me. If you don't like smelling smoke, don't go where you can smell smoke. It's like the person who says, "Doctor, it hurts when I move my arm like this," to which the doctor replies, "Well then, don't move your arm like that".

What's next? Loud music has been proven to cause hearing damage. Time for a "Quiet Concert" ordinance. After all, we have to protect the workers. Maybe we can get rid of all food with fat in it. After all, fat causes heart disease. No more cheese burgers, no more french fries. It's for the public health. Or how about we mandate suncreen. The sun causes cancer, you know.

These ordinances are ridiculous. Where's it going to end?

Mike

Some very good points here. I can agree with those who feel smoking could be banned in public (government) buildings, but if it's a privately owned business? No. Absolutely not. I would even disagree with those who argue the indoor workplace ban. If I own a business and want to allow my employees to smoke at their desks: THAT IS MY RIGHT. Anyone who doesn't like it, can find work with an employer who does not allow employees to smoke at their desks: that is THEIR right.

In terms of smoke in the workplace and employee rights, I think Mike's noise argument is one of the most pertinent. Noise pollution can cause headache, induce hearing loss, raise blood pressure, exacerbate hypertension, and have cardiovascular, autonomic, and gastric effects. As Mike says, some people work at rock concerts - some work in dance clubs, some in sports stadiums, some at NASCAR tracks. Noise is hardly going to be banned in any of those places - and employees are hardly going to demand that those with noisy race cars get their mufflers fixed. If one has a problem with the effects of noise, one finds a job elsewhere.

Some are going to argue that noise is unavoidable in those types of venues - and that is true. So freakin' what? If I am going to work as productively as I can, smoking is unavoidable around me. And, in any event, if a business owner wants to allow smoking in a premisis that they own... it is their right, it is their right, it is their RIGHT! It's their property, for God's sake. What damned country are we living in???

When I was working as a production designer, smoking had been allowable anywhere except in studio (and, even then, the "talent" and guests could smoke on camera). After I'd been there several years, they tried to impose a ban on all indoor smoking. Suddenly - I mean, like, over night - overtime went up by 30% and there was such a marked drop in productivity that the ban was lifted after less than six weeks. The anti-smokers went nuts over that! Hee-hee-hee-hee-hee.

As it is, I easily spend thirty to forty minutes every day going outside to smoke - some days more. Multiply that by the number of smokers here (we've got 40,000 employees and a good 25% of them smoke) and that could be 5,000 hours lost to the smoking ban every day - and that's 156,250 days per annum - in one business. I'm currently working about fifteen to twenty hours overtime every week. If I could smoke in a closed room down the hall, a good 25-30% would be knocked off that. If I could smoke at my desk, that would be cut in half. Smoking bans are costing American business money - lots of money - and that doesn't even begin to address the loss of revenue to the service industry due to bans on smoking in restaurants and bars.

Anyway, I have to get back to work - if only the non-smoker in the next cubicle would turn down her freakin' radio so I could concentrate...

Thanks for crunching those numbers Wertz! Very interesting...What do you pro-ban people think of that??

The gov't has not right to FORCE PRIVATE business owners to do something, or tell them how to run their business.

If the gov't stayed out of it, then some places would allow smoking, some would not, and some might have a seperate smoking section. You would just go to the one that best suited your lifestyle.

In a PUBLICLY run gov't office, they can do whatever they want. But quit telling the people how to run their business.

Like Mike said....whats next...loud music and quiet concerts?

--cheers

But if we returned to this definition of public places than American businesses have the right to discriminate based on skin color.

This was the argument of many Americans who felt the sit-in movement was unjust. If I don't want to serve them in my place of business then I don't have to.

heh, maybe we should speak out against having radios in cubes, because they disturb the peace, and they shouldn't be forcing their kind of music on us.

heh

good post Wertz, I'll back you up on this one 100%

--cheers

Careful, Eeyore: introducing the question of discrimination could backfire here. It could be argued that smokers are victims of prejudice and all businesses would have to welcome them. What next? Employees have to set goals for hiring a proportional number of qualified smokers?


The point is, we're talking about two entirely different issues here. Like it or not, according to the laws of our land, smoking is legal - discrimination on the basis of race, religion, and gender is illegal. If you're lobbying to have nicotine addicts added to the list, though, you've got my support.

Did I ever, EVER say that I thought it was just for our government to butt in and put in place quotas?

NO.

Call me a racist all you want, but I don't feel "equal oppurtunity" laws are nessacary, nor do they fit into a truely free country.

Freedom of assembly, individuals should have the right to associate with whomever they choose, and leave out whomever they choose for any reason they feel. The government needs to be out of all private businesses, period.

Back to topic, sorry Jaime, Mike. But it fits somewhat doesn't it??

First, let me light up a smoke in order to ponder this one.... there. Aaah.

I am a total hypocrite about this in some ways. As a singer, though I am a smoker, I can't smoke while I'm singing. Singing requires much deeper diaphragm breathing. When I play in a club, I love playing where there is no smoking allowed. It really does make a difference.

However, when I go out to SEE music, I HATE it when I CAN'T smoke. I'm such an *** NOTICE: THIS WORD IS AGAINST THE RULES. FAILURE TO REMOVE IT WILL RESULT IN A STRIKE. ***!

I have to agree that a business should be allowed to choose its own policy in regard to smoking. The only regulation I can see that makes sense is perhaps this: if you are a business that allows smoking on premises, you should have to make it known explicitly to everyone you consider hiring.

As for the music in the next cubicle, they should place a ban on country and easy listening music.

It seems to me, no matter how you feel about this issue, it is being done by your representatives on whatever government level - federal (airplanes), state, or county or city.

Therefore, you have the right to contest a 'to ban or not to ban' law and begin either a recall of the government body, or a revocation of the law.

The law, in the final analysis, is determined by the people. The constitutional amendment that outlawed alcohol was unenforceable because it was not supported by the population as a whole.

So, the bottom line is not what government does about smoking - but whether the population will obey the law. All law rests upon the enforceability of the law. If the population does not as a majority comply the law will not work and will be rescinded.

There are many avenues to contest law. Don't blame government - government is US.

(By the way - I hate second hand smoke - it makes me very ill almost instantly. So, I am a happy camper with this law.)

BUt don't people who don't want to be around smoking have the same right not to be around it as the smokers have the right to smoke?

CP

If I were the owner of a business, I would seriously consider paying smokers less based on such data. Why do smokers think they have the right to take more breaks than others? I have worked with smokers before the ban and can tell you smokers are less productive than non-smokers even without a ban due to their smoking breaks. I would keep working during these breaks while they did not.

I have yet to see anyone refute my claim that society is better off with the smoking bans. Smoking bans have increased choice. Does anyone refute that?

I'm a smoker, and I don't smoke at work at all. If an employer doesn't monitor the number of breaks that their employees take, that's poor management.



Some businesses are not better off with smoking bans. Bars, nightclubs, and coffee houses lose a lot of business when they don't allow smoking.

I don't feel I have the right to take more breaks, I feel I have to right to smoke at my desk if I so choose. If my employer wishes to deny me that right, I am forced to take more breaks because I will not quit smoking and do not work productively at all when I can't smoke.


Then you have never worked in an environment without a smoking ban. In jobs where I've been able to smoke without leaving my desk, I almost never took breaks - frequently skipping even meal breaks. Until working under smoking bans (which I've only encountered in the US in the past four years), I was always one of the most productive - if not the most productive - employee of any company for which I've worked. Granted, this is anecdotal - and I'm a bit of a workaholic anyway - but your argument simply doesn't make sense to me.


Okay, I refute your claim that society is better off with the smoking bans. "Society" has become dictatorial, censorious, and restrictive. This is better? Better than what?


I'm astonished by this question. I most certainly refute it. I can no longer choose to eat in a restaurant where I may enjoy a post-prandial cigarette. I can no longer choose to work at my full capacity. I can no longer choose to patronize a bar where I may smoke while I socialize. As a smoker, "choice" has been utterly eliminated in many key areas of my daily life: eating, working, and socializing. Does the removal of choice get more fundamental? Prior to smoking bans, one could choose to patronize businesses where smoking was permitted or where smoking was prohibited. The owner of a business could choose whether s/he wanted to permit, restrict, or prohibit smoking. Now there is no choice whatsoever. How can you possibly argue that smoking bans have increased choice?

Edited to tone down the rhetoric having smoked a cigarette and calmed down a bit...

correct me if I'm wrong, but discrimination is defined as any action taken for or against a small group for the benefit of a large group. By that definition, bans on smoking are direct acts of discrimination against smokers. Isn't that supposed to be illegal?

i'm sorry but you went off base here. not allowing someone in a place of buisness due to race is discrimination which is illegal by the constitution.

now read my last post......

Smokers are in the minority. The bans exist to guarantee the rights of OTHER PEOPLE to choose where to work, eat, or drink. Those with enough sense not to kill themselves and everyone around them at least.

Maybe you will not be astonished when I explain my remark is regards to society as a whole and not just the point of view of a minority group, smokers. Smokers are indeed having their choices reduced. However, the non-smoker now have many more choices. Smoking was everywhere before laws were enacted to restrict smoking. This restricted non-smokers choices. The percentage of society given more choice with smoking bans is greater than the percentage who have lost choice. Overall, society has more choice.

I hate to see anyone lose choice. Perhaps this is an issue similar to racial discrimination. Affirmative action is racial discrimination but has been a valuable tool to accelerate the rate of correcting past discrimination. Affirmative action should not be used forever and is somewhere at that point when it should be ended. Maybe with smoking bans, we have introduced the concept to business that they can indeed ban smoking and thrive. After a period of time, these total bans can be lifted and introduce choice to private businesses and not return to a society inundated with smoke.

Still, I have a hard time feeling sympathy for a group with a drug problem and a delivery system than affects others and not just themselves. If you want to take drugs, that should be your choice but you should not be able to casually subject others to it. There has to be a solution which increases choice for all and not infringe upon the rights of others.

I can sympathize with your point of view, Gray Seal. In Boulder, Colorado, a town with a complete smoking ban except for in the case of private clubs and still with restrictions, I saw a remedy in a night-club that I believe would work for most businesses. They had a completely enclosed and heavily ventilated smoking lounge.

Being that the majority of the club's clientele were smokers, this allowed the club to maintain the business that would have migrated to the Denver club scene, but it also kept the main area of the club free of smoke. It was a nice compromise to the situation, and in my opinion, all parties benefitted.

That does sound good! It would be great if both smokers and non-smokers can enjoy the atmosphere of the same club. That would be good for business and give everyone an opportunity.

I agree that this sounds like a good idea, cyan. I would also agree with those who have mentioned how ludicrous it has been for restaurants or other businesses to have "smoking sections" which blend seamlessly into the "non-smoking sections" - some without even so much as a partition. I believe that businesses which wish to permit smoking should do so responsibly (despite the fact that the second-hand smoke statistics are highly dubious at best - the stuff of another thread), but they should have the right to do so. It's been predicted that when the smoking ban in Florida comes into full effect this June that it will result in losses of millions (some say billions) of dollars in revenue to the service industry - hotels, restaurants, bars, clubs, theme parks - which is the bulk of the state's economy.

I should also mention, yet again (I've put this argument forward in so many threads that I'm blue in the fingers), that one of the founding principles of this country is the protection the rights of minorities, down to the individual, not to subject every member of the population to the prejudices of any majority. The arguments based on the fact that smokers are a minority of the population belong in another country.

You're misreading our arguments then. We're not saying that (at least I'm not) smokers have no rights because they aren't a minority.

Smoking infringes directly on other people's rights. I wouldn't be allowed (for example) to walk up and down the street with blasting music at 130 decibals. Why? Because I'm infringing on another person's rights. In that area, the rights of the people nearby outweigh the rights of the individual because each one of them is having their individual rights violated.

But, harm is being done to the people outside of the group of smokers. Why should they be subject to that harm?

CP

As UltimateJoe said, my defining smokers as a minority group is not my basis for restricting their choice. I am with you, Wertz, on protecting the rights of minority groups. It is am important principle which should not be dismissed in any situation, including this smoking one. I have not seen any argument in this thread which reflects such an attitude.



Who is doing this predicting and why are they expecting a loss?

In my experience with smokers (ex-gf, best friend, etc.) rarely are outings (or vacations for that matter) cancelled because of the availability of smoking. They are merely modified. I for one tend to spend more time at bars that are smoke free; and I've noticed larger crowds of people who could very well be thinking the same?

Bar and restaurant owners mostly. There were a few articles about it in the Orlando Sentinel shortly after the referendum was passed last November. I'll see if I can find anything further on it. I should think the "why" was obvious. I'm just one person, but I dine out three or four times per week and go to a bar or club maybe once a week. I only patronize establishments in which I can smoke. Once the full ban is in force, I can't imagine dining out more than once or twice a month (if that) - and I can't imagine having a drink without a cigarette at all. Consequently, these establishments will be losing better than 90% of my patronage.

While I'd thought this might be more appropriate to a new thread, enough people have been bringing it up as an argument in favor of anti-smoking legislation that I should at least mention one FACT. Almost all arguments regarding the dangers of second-hand smoke trace their "evidence" back to a 1993 study done by the EPA. This study was a meta-analysis of previous research, which can a be a very valuable way to statistically assess data. However, in the case of the EPA, the analysis has since been thoroughly discredited - in fact, the first six chapters of the study were ruled either non-truthful or sensationalized in their findings and methods by a Federal Court - which ruled that, in essence, the EPA had deliberately skewed their results to match their hypothesis and eliminated all the evidence which contradicted their presumptions. Nevertheless, the anti-smoking lobby has continued to cite this fraudulent study as their primary source for the effects of environmental tobacco smoke.

A more recent study by the World Health Organization, which conducted its own research, found that the effects of second-hand smoke are negligible and, in some cases, may even be protective. The WHO itself initially refused to release their findings and when, after much lobbying by the British press, they did release the results, there was a virtual media blackout of their findings. There's a lot of information on both studies here and lots of information on the health impact to both smokers and non-smokers here. Another study published by the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, which found that health risks due to second-hand smoke in the workplace and the home was not statistically significant among adults and that there was no increased risk due to childhood exposure can be found here (if you've got Acrobat Reader).

Argue that you don't like the smell of smoke, if you will (and join my campaign to outlaw the wearing of excessive perfume and cologne in public), but please don't argue junk science. If there's to be further discussion of the evidence - make that lack of evidence - related to the harmful effects of environmental smoke, though, it should probably be relegated to a new thread...

I'm sorry, but that's just not true. The reason you can't walk down the street with a radio blaring at 130db is because that is noise pollution, which people do have the RIGHT not to listen to.

But smokers are not infringing on anyones rights because nowhere in the law books does it say a person has the RIGHT not to have to smell cigarette smoke. These bans simply provide non-smokers the privilege of enjoying any restaurant, bar, or club they want while we smokers are forced to either suffer nicotine fits or only congregate in places where smoking is allowed. It's our rights that are being infringed upon, not yours.

I disagree. Aside from the idea that second hand smoke may cause cancer and the rather disgusting smell that it produces, there is also the fact that there are many people who are allergic to cigarette smoke. It causes dry scratchy throats, irritated eyes...most of this is minor, but it does effect the people in the vicinity of the smoker in a negative way unless the person is a smoker themselves and desensitized to it. I would say that's an example of infringing on someone else's rights.

Also, I'm not sympathetic to the "suffering" of smokers who are having nicotine fits. I realize that it is uncomfortable. I have them myself, but smokers have to face the reality that they have chosen to smoke, and therefore, they have to accept the responsibility and consequences that come along with that. There is no one for a smoker who is having a nic fit to blame but themselves.

Again, I believe there are effective solutions that benefit all sides of the argument that don't involve the banning of smoking, and I support those, because wrapped up in this smoking vs. non-smoking argument, there is also the idea of a business owner's rights. Like it or not, smoking and bars often go hand in hand, and banning smoking can reduce a business owner's income. Why take that route, when there are other effective solutions?

I still can't accept this argument. Leaving aside the alleged health risks (which I've already debunked as much as I feel I should in this thread), loads more people are allergic to pollen than to smoke. Granted, the symptoms of hay fever are minor (dry scratchy throat, irritated eyes), but it does affect people in the vicinity of certain flowers in a negative way. Besides, the smell of some flowers is so sickly sweet that they make me nauseous - not to mention the number that contain deadly toxins. Is there a ban on those cursed fresh-cut flowers in restaurants anywhere? Hell, let's get the damned things out of churches and funeral parlors as well - how dare such public places infringe on the rights of allergy sufferers? And botanical gardens are virtual death traps! I say it's time to start putting florists, gardeners, and all those other life-threatening stamenheads out of business as well.

Flowers and pollen are naturally occurring in nature. Rolled tobacco, loaded with carcinogens is not a natural occurrence. Sorry that argument does not hold water.

Sleeper