But you cannot guarantee that I won't be in my yard or on the sidewalk, and thus suffer from your smoking. The law is my protection that should I be in my yard or on the public sidewalk, I won't have to suffer from your smoking.

Again, smoking is your privilege, not your right. Shared property rights to a public good, are mine and trump your privelege.

Well then you'll also know that nuisance is a tort, and tort liability requires a finding of harm. This is because it is important for the state to not interfere with anyone's enjoyment of land (including that of the smoker) where it does not harm, but only annoys other people. That smoking generally pollutes the air cannot be enough, or plenty of socially useful activity would be tortious as well. I think you would have a very difficult time proving that smoking in an outdoor area causes any tortious harm to anyone nearby.

Oh sure, start throwing around legalese ;) You want harm? I'll forward my dry-cleaning receipt, required to removing the lingering stale smell of second hand smoke from my clothes.

thank you. i knew i'd heard all this before.

I cringe whenever I see these words together.

Isn't it just as much a privelege to not "suffer from [my] smoking" as it is to be able to smoke on the sidewalk? If smoking is my right, then not smoking is yours. If smoking is my privelege, then not smoking is your privelege. I don't get why abstaining from something is a right and choosing to do it is a privelege.

How else would you describe air, streets paid for by public funds, etc?

Wait, your clothes had to be dry-cleaned to get rid of lingering smoke smell from coming into contact with it on the street? That, my friend, is amazing.

there is no constitutional right to smoke so as long as a state government has some rational basis to pass a smoking ban (health would be more than enough), it will be easily constitutional.

The abstention is not a right, I have a right not to suffer from your suffering, unless I enter and occupy of my own free will a private establishment where smoking occurs (i.e. I choose to endure said suffering).

i agree that it's constitutional, i just think it's crappy policy, particularly from a liberatarian's perspective.

But I think that some of the arguments against this is that health is not enough because there is no real evidence that the smoke that one comes into contact with walking down the street hurts someone anymore than the exhaust from a bus or a tractor trailer.

To show harm, I would submit the receipts and testify to it in court, amazing or not.

I support indoor smoking bans, and hope a ban passes on the Ohio ballot. Sorry Libertarians, but the free market and Drew Carey ain't gonna cut it.

Well, I will see you in court ASSHOLE! haha

the rational basis test is an extremely low standard. the SCOTUS hardly ever says something violates this standard.

and haq - i think that banning smoking outside is just stupid policy.

With Billzebub avatar the way it is, I picture him mowing the pro-smoking people down and yelling his arguments as we die. It's funny to me what effect avatars can have on the way I read posts.

not true. when you go outside, you voluntarily expose yourself, even if it's on your own front yard. you risk hearing, seeing, and smelling things that you may find offensive. you can always retreat into your home if you don't want to be exposed to those things. the law recognizes that you have a higher expectation of privacy inside your home than outside. privacy is the right to be left alone--by the police, noisy neighbors, or marauding smokers.

yeah, i doubt that too, i don't think that's a good legal position, just a good way of thinking about the issue.

Yes, but these laws state that your smoking still violates my lower expectation of privacy.

What you people doing that causes you to be constantly assailed by cigarette smoke?

the new court is probably going to be pretty dubious about expanding or even talking much about the right to privacy at all.

so the justification is now that smokers walk through residential areas and blow smoke on your lawn? i thought it was that you had to walk by people on busy public streets?
when it comes to smell, i'm fully prepared to say you have no legitimate expectation of being free from offensive odor the minute you step outside. your right to control the smell of your environment ends at your front door. and even then it's hardly absolute--i used to live in an apartment above a vietnamese family who had some truly heinous cooking smells that invaded my apartment. it's pretty unlikely i could have done anything about it even if i tried.

druucifer keeps walking past my damned house/

unless you can fit this whole issue into some kind of nuisance law analysis.