Seriously. Fifteen feet from the establishment. Well, shit, that puts me in fucking traffic.

Because even though privately owned, these places are public. Couldn't I say, "look it's fine that your black and all and I have no problem with that but I just don't want to drink with you and the owner only wants whites in here." Absolutely not cause the government is in the business of protecting the public and it's interest. It should be in the interest of the government to protect people's health even if they choose to go into a resturant or bar. Nobody in a resturant is able to add poison to the water or food. Shouldn't be allowed to put in the air that everyone breathes. I should have the right to choose dying of liquor failure or obesity and not lung cancer. You can have your beer and a cigerette wherever you choose at long as it's not a health risk to the general public.

The majority of people who don't smoke and thus support indoor smoking bans (if I may speak for a shitload of people for a moment) don't care if you smoke outside, or in your car, or in your house. They (we) just don't wanna share your cigarette with you.

And people who want the distance from the door deal, "10 feet minimum" etc, only say that because if you go right outside the doorway and light up (or ten of you do) it all just blows right back in the door.

outside of your job and/or place of employment, I would say most places where smoking are banned can be described as just that as well. You don't HAVE to go to Ruby Tuesday's to get their kick ass hamburger. You could make one yourself. It's strictly recreational. The same as going to a bar or having a smoke.

Now again, I don't have any problem with banning smoking indoors. However, we just sort of went from all is ok to nothing at all with fines and an "illegal" label for allowing smoking. Now this is just silly and is why I have a problem with the big guys in Washington or whatever state government issuing laws about it. Why can we not have places that allow it and places that don't up to the owner's decision. Trust me, there would be plenty of places that banned it because I do believe that if it was that important to not be smothered in someone elses smoke people would stop allowing smoking in their places of business.

Fact is, it is a preference of non-smokers and instead of actually being really truly passionate about it so that they would actually not give business to a place that allowed it, it is just easier to be adamant about the laws that ban it. It's a lazy man's law allowed into place because for some reason people can't handle making their own decisions.

I have absolutely no problem with no smoking indoors. I think it makes for a better place for recreation and it doesn't turn your walls yellow. Whatever. I do have a problem with just instantly taking away the ability for a private business owner or the CEO of McDonalds to allow or ban smoking for themselves.

I am not sure about this, but was it a law that passed about removing smoking from movie theaters or did it just become accepted practice.

Furthermore, I would be adamant about this whether I smoked or not. Even when smoking indoors was allowed I wouldn't smoke indoors. I don't even like it.

And Jewels, I am not whining that we can't smoke indoors and that it is just so hard to go outside. I have a serious problem with just arbitrary preferential laws being enacted without allowing business their right to decide whether or not they want to do it. Also, I have a serious freaking problem with banning smoking outdoors. That is almost as mind boggling as those blank peices of paper with nothing but the phrase "this page intentionally left blank" written on them.

Then shut the door.

Prohibition will just prepetuate an already burgeoning black market.

Do you know that at least 20% of cigarette profits are not taxed and are controlled by criminal organizations? Imagine what would happen if prohibition of tobbacco were to take effect.


But remember, the biggest campaign contributor to the Dems and Republicans is Altria, and RJ Reynolds not far behind. Big tobbacco isn't going anywhere.

I can tell you straight from experience working for Big Tobbacco, that they DO fill their ciggarettes with thousands of dangerous chemicals. . . . . .I mean some of the stuff they put in it is disugusting. My orientation, I had to see how cigarettes were made, it ain't pretty. They say all t he chemicals add flavour, but from someone I spoke with there, they don't ACUTALLY need to add half the shit they are putting in. IN fact most of the chemicals being put in are just an additive to nicotine, but without explicitly SAYING they are raising nicotine levels. It's just one way of making their product extremely addictive.

You said this:



In response to someone who said they didn't smoke and that they liked an indoor smoking ban.

Sure, you've got the right to smoke. I don't think you should have the right to smoke inside of a public place.

Here is why I am for a public (indoor) smoking ban as opposed to leaving it up to individual businesses the way it is now:

1. I realize that I can simply avoid going to any place that allows smoking indoors, but every bar I know of allows. I would like to go out and get a drink with my friends sometimes, but the fact that I will be drenched in smoke and immediately have to wash everything I wore to the bar is actually a real deterrent for me.

2. A ban would change this.

This really isn't a matter of my rights trampling yours. In fact your rights have been trampling mine, and people like me are only now making progress to change that.

I can take the smell of smoke, and I don't care if people smoke outside or in their own homes. I'm sorry if you feel like you should be able to smoke indoors when you go out for a drink, but doing so means that everyone else in the same room has to inhale your smoke, too. I'm sure you already know this, though.

And yes, I'm above smoking, just like I'm above drinking antifreeze and eating urinal cakes.

AWESOME.

It's not arbitary. It's about protecting the public' s health. My best friend's grandfather died of 2nd hand smoke. Never smoked a day in his life.

Sarcasm noted, Prince of Darkness.

Dude, you can't die from second hand smoke unless you worked in a smoky bar for 40 years and you smoked on top of that. There is a correlation, albeit a weak one between smoking and cancer, but no causation. The problem with the methodology is that you can't quanitfy it appropriately, and what ends up happening is both sides misconstrue the data to their own liking.

Another thing people forget about is the people who work at these places and it's not only resturants and bars. Young people who need jobs to cover expenses while in school ( as we remember from a previous thread, it can be tough for those not living at home) are the most likely to work in the food service industry and bars because of the relatively good pay and flexable hours. Should they be forced to subject themselves to potential poor health cause they need money? But it's not limited to bars. Given Joe's it's the owner decision, it could be any business.

Well at least we fucking agree on SOMETHING.

Why does it have to be all or nothing? Why can't there be some smoke free establishments, and some smoking permitted establishments?

All right, i gotta run to my next school, keep it hot and interesting so i have something to read 8th period.

I don't pretend to know the data. But I do know my best friend's grandfather died of a normally smoking related illness yet never smoked a day in his life. Doctors said he had the lung of a smoker. Come to find out he worked at an office with smoking and little outside ventillation. Could be antecedotal, but it's good enough for me.

ok. a couple things. And I don't mean in any way to tarnish the memory of your best friend's grandfather but how in the hell do you KNOW that the cancer was from second hand smoke? There is absolutely no way to know that. You can get cancer from just about anything and that seems arbitrary as well and to simply say that he got it from someone elses smoke seems a bit unfounded.

My grandfather lived with my grandmother for about 50 years where she smoked 40+ years of marriage about 3 packs a day. She definitely died at least indirectly from cigarettes. However, my gramps lived to be 85 and died from prostate cancer which apparently 90% of men will eventually get diagnosed with...can't remember the source on that so the number may very well be wrong.

Again, I have no problem with protecting the health in general. But at least TRY and let businesses and the general public determine whether they can handle it on their own besides making some legal matter out of it.

Again, if it was that serious of an issue and not just some preference, then you would see business backed up to the wall by their customers to remove smoking. But if it ain't that big a deal until big government gets invovled, then at the very least I'd say we're going about this the wrong way.

Actually, tobacco is the lone commodity that has shown very little price elacticity or is it non-elaciticity. I always get that confused. Basically you can tax the shit out of it and rise the prices and it doesn't dent the demand. It's been pretty obvious people will pay ungodly amounts of money to stand outside in the cold and slowly kill themselves.

Lung cancer resulting from first-hand or second-hand smoking has not been quantifiably proven. Your friend's grandfather could've had a history of cancer in his family, or been prone to some other hazard, but it couldn't have just been smoking alone.

Look by no means am I defending smoking, I just hate the hysteria that's come from anti-smoking groups in recent years. It's gotten pretty fuckin ridiculous. They will try to link smoking to dwarfism, giantism, cerebral palsy, and who knows what the fuck else. It's just creates a domino effect of hysteria.

hahaha: "U.S.A.--U.S.A.--U.S.A." *punching fist in the air.*

Prohibition might work in theory, but it will be a BITCH to enforce.

oh come on, the wisco isn't scary. that sign is ridiculous though.

i'm just sad that smut n' eggs is closing.

Did I say it was cancer? Cause it wasn't. Forgot the name but his doctors told him that he had the lungs of a smoker and that he had never seen a case of it, where the individual did not smoke. But hey, he's just the doctor. So I don't. Is it possible that's unrelated. Sure. But it's the most likely explanation.

There are business backed up to the wall, hence this movement. But if smokers make up at the minimum 10% of the market and the non-smokers come anyway cause we like to eat out too, then they're gonna fight to protect it even if they're concern is unfounded.

At least big tobacco still has Europe and Asia, where they don't have any concept of an indoor smoking ban. It seems only in the UK and Ireland they give a shit, every other country doesn't care.

Ok, I deleted all that other crap. haha.

You didn't say cancer. I assumed. My bad.

I guess I don't understand the all or nothing thing. Like if there is no ban you cant go anywhere because everywhere allows it or if there is a ban smokers are cranky bitches who don't tip anymore because they don't have their fix.

I understand that with a ban both sides can go to the same place and still get the service there. That's no big deal, and I am all for a "ban". But not a government initiated one.

IT WASN"T CANCER. There are a hundred known poisons recognized by the FDA in a cigerette. It ain't good for you, bub. The levels of arsenic in drinking water hasn't been proven to cause anything but most of you freaked out when they raised the allowable amount a miniscule amount. Why? CAUSE IT"S POISON. You don't want poison in your water and I don't want it in my air. People should be able to have some reasonable amount of control of what they allow in their body especially their is at least the reasonable amount of concern that said substance ain't good.


I don't care if you smoke. All my friends do. I should just be entitled to be able to go to a resturant or a bar, and not have to endanger my life.

I should add that I used to be against these bans but have changed my mnd after really examining it.

You better double-check your company's research, holmes.

2-3 ultra light heaters a day here. If I'm boozing, tack on five more.

up next: banning of BO, over-cologning, babies being changed.