Here in Ohio, the indoor cigarette smoking ban passed by 58% of voters went into effect yesterday. It prohibits smoking in all “places that have employees.” Great. Now its illegal to smoke in the privately owned restaurants, bowling alleys, and bars of Ohio–the last sanctuaries of this sacred tradition. Also, for every public place of business, it has been mandated that a sign will be posted displaying a telephone number so that tattletales can call the authorities and report “violations”, punishable by atleast a fine of $2500. Now that is some fascist police state shit, when the cops have private citizens–strangers–basically informing on each other.
Also, the law is so puritan that it restricts truck drivers and other commercial drivers from smoking in their vehicles. Even if they own the vehicles themselves.
Recently, Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s dictatorial regime in New York City has gone further in their efforts to control the populace, and they have banned specific kinds of fats from city restaurants. This isn’t so disagreeable itself, as people usually don’t know what they might be eating, but where will this stop? First cigarettes, now trans-fats. Maybe the fat ban is good. Maybe outsiders will understand the plight of the smoker if more were to feel the blunt end of the nanny state spear.
Granted I dislike blanket, sweeping laws that enforce stuff like this to a level THIS extreme. The anti-smoking ban should be toned down a bit, but I personally applaud efforts to keep as many public places as possible smoke free (a $2500 fine is excessive, though). Though something like an anti-smoking ban would be very difficult to put into place, and would be impossible to appease both sides of the fence. Either the rules would be so loose it would make the ban frivilous, or it’d be overkill to the level we see, and people start relating it to facisim.
On the other hand, ‘plight of the smoker’ is a farce. Smokers chose to smoke, they got themselves addicted to poisonous tubes, it’s their own damn fault. I don’t see that level of sympathy for people who chose to be lazy fatasses, so why do smokers get special treatment?
I dislike breathing second hand smoke. I’m not the type of person that would freak at a smoke if he lit up near me, though. If it’s legal for them to smoke in the area, then they can smoke. I still prefer not to breathe the shit in, though.
In philadelphia, smoking is banned the same way, in any indoor private business. But you also can’t buy rolling papers, single blunts, or pipes of ANY kind (yes, even corncob).
Smoking bans are just a backdoor way of making moral control of the populace by the state seem acceptable. >:(
Frankly I don’t care that you smoke. When employees are stuck with your fumes multiplied by a couple hunderd people smoking in a place over the course of an 8 hour shift they are potentally risking thier health. Your right to smoke does not give you the right to endanger others health. As for the truckers, thats strange, but it’s not like it’s really enforcable.
Also we are <B><I>THE FATTEST NATION EVER</I></b> the romans would look at us and say, “It takes true hedonists to make abominations like <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luther_Burger”>The Luther</a> and <a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_fried_Twinkie”>Deep fried Twinkies</a>.” Seriously something needs to be done and if banning trans fats from restaurants will help I’m for it, solely on the principle that you really don’t know what they are cooking with health wise.
I feel that the government shouldn’t intervene if I’m fucking myself up, but when it comes to others fucking my health up then there should be at least some limits.
A law like that’s been in Quebec for a while. They’re still trying the thing out.
I mean, imagine, you can’t smoke from…what was it again? 10 feet from any public building(school, hospital) either as an added bonus. And we’ve got some harsh winter here.
We’re going to get the same exact law next year too, although proper enforcing starts around August or so. I’d say it’ll put a dent on the populations of most bars which don’t have specific space for smoking. Extra shattered since the law seems to prohibit people from taking their drinks to said spaces.
I discourage people from starting smoking, but those who already have begun the habit, it’s their own business. Heck, I feel these (almost) 21 years of passive smoking due to my 'folks being smokers has made me somewhat indifferent to the matter as of late. Then again, a man who can’t even light a cigarette or even smoke a water pipe properly is speaking at the moment.
Lun: Especially nice when it comes to certain stress-filled public careers. I’d expect teachers who have the habit to crack in no time. Guess people who go clubbing will stay home more often.
Smoking is a destructive activity. There is absolutely nothing positive about it, and the medical risks, both from primary and second-hand smoke, are astounding - according to my brother, who’s in residency, there isn’t a single major disease which isn’t compounded in some way by smoking.
I do feel bad for those people who started smoking when it wasn’t thought of as bad for you and now is addicted, but the less people we see smoking in public, the less we’ll come to validate and condone smoking.
If you smoke near me you’re damaging my lungs. I should be able to sue you for causing harm to my general health. That’d be better than fining the smokers.
The reason your argument is bullshit is because smoking affects other people than yourself and thus if you wanna fuck yourself over on your own, go right ahead. Don’t fuck other people over in the process. Smoking bans are good. It has nothing to do with nanny states. Nanny - ish behavior is like banning soft drinks in high school. Now that is retarded because it doesn’t fix the problem. And obesity is a huge fucking problem. All the problems from weight make it such that our generation is the first generation ever to have a decreased life expectancy. The costs of obesity and the consequences of obesity to the health care system are insanely high, making it such that it is in the interest of the state to get people slimmer to prevent having to pay for a lot of these problems.
As Cid said, there isn’t a single medical condition that isn’t worsened by smoking.
Yeah, lets burn 'em. Haha. I made a funny. But really, I don’t give a shit about who smokes and who doesn’t. They wanna slowly kill themselves like idiots, let them.
For starters, I don’t think smoking should be banned in adult places. The law in Georgia is that a buisness cannot accomodate smokers in an indoor restaurant if it serves minors. So bars and such (although not bowling alleys) you can still smoke in.
Next; if you’re working in a restaurant that includes a smoking section then request that you not be scheduled in the smoking section. Furthermore, if you work in a bar… tough shit, because as Silhoutte said, you go to a bar it’s a big chance that people are going to be smoking.
For gods sake, I wish people would just stop worrying and just live. Sure, second hand smoke is dangerous but so are a lot of other things. Stop pestering yourself and others by over reacting to silly things.
However, I do believe that by restricting places people can smoke you’re making it more difficult and less attractive. Which is a good thing, because smoking is disgusting and no good comes of it.
Uhhh, how about the short term calming and relaxing effects of nicotine? I’m not saying this outweighs the perils of poisoning your lungs, but seriously, its not like most people decide to start smoking because they want a really slow form of suicide
Also, i have absolutely NO fucking sympathy for any bartender who bitches about secondhand smoke. Sorry, thats part of the job. I have marginal sympathy if any for a waiter.
Well, i guess it sucks if you live in Ohio and if you smoke. Well, Im glad that i dont live in Ohio, and that I dont smoke…such a waste of money, and you are basically killing yourself, but I guess thats besides the point. My one friend does it just so he can die slowly.
Whether or not smoking is destructive to your health has little relevance to the question of whether private businesses should allow it in their establishments. There are plenty of restarants that do not allow smoking at all in them that you can choose to patronize. The “plight of the smoker” that I lament is not any kind of medical condition they may or may not incur, it is that we are forced to stand in the cold outside by the state to pursue our habit. People need to take responsibility for their own lives and stop using the state to enforce their private moralities on others.
You can support a smoking ban for private establishments, and the trans-fats ban, and whatever the jackbooted health thugs are going to spin up next; just don’t call yourself a lover of liberty. Or a true American.
You do not have the freedom to poison other people in your effort to do so yourself. I would find killing your neighbour to be quite un-American.
Smoking is not a right. If you smoke, that’s your problem, not the problem of the people around you. All the State did was hold a vote that showed that the majority of the populace wanted the State to have the authority to protect them against the dangers posed by smoking. So in reality, this isn’t tyrany by the state, but by the people.
Scenario:
Some guys are smoking next to a group of pregnant women
Pregnant woman 1: “Excuse me, smoking is hazardous to my health and to that of my fetus, can you please stop smoking?”
The guys laugh and purposefully blow smoke in the woman’s face.
Smoking guy 1: “Fuck you.”.
What to do, what to do… People only respond to force and this act empowers people in such contexts.
Also, there are other occasions where the State has been given the power to inconvenience people. People who have tuberculosis can be arrested for not obeying to be treated, for example.
Ah, but what if you have to work in them? Then you find another job in a restaurant that fills your needs, right? But wait, this is the real world, where people need money to live and getting a job isn’t that simple, especially if you are being picky about what jobs you take. If you have to choose between starvation and slow-acting poison, you probably would go for the poison, but that choice has no reason to exist as is in the first place.
Like Sin said, smoking is not a right given in the Constitution, neither it be USA’s, Canada’s, Argentina’s or any other. The oversimplified general idea of any free government is that you can do whatever you like with yourself as long as it doesn’t harm somebody else, and smoking does just that.
And, once again, there is absolutely no reason to smoke. No, stress isn’t an excuse at all, there’s a great deal of us who have the same lives as you and we work just fine without nicotine or other drugs. If you have trouble quitting or trouble finding a comfortable place to smoke, remember this: It’s your own fucking problem. It is within your power to stop smoking, it is not within ours to stop inhaling your gas when we have to be near you.
