 Quote:
Originally Posted by Katczinsky  If the restaurant you're at lets people smoke, someone does it, and you don't like it? Tough stuff. Go to a different restaurant.
It's not difficult, people.
But I agree about parks, I don't have any trouble with banning smoking in a public place like a park.
But banning them from private places (even if publicly accessible) like restaurants is retarded. I think California even tried to get a resolution passed that smoking in your car would be illegal...or something like that. | Actually, I think it's perfectly legitimate to ban smoking in public. There's plenty of reasons to do it.
1) Public Safety. Everyone knows secondhand smoking is harmful, but many don't understand the extent to which it is. The CEPA (California Environmental Protection Agency) found that over 300,000 people died in 2006 nationally from lung cancer. The kicker? Those people were non-smokers. Sure they could've lived with smokers, but that doesn't change the fact that they didn't give themselves lung cancer. Lung cancer isn't only caused by cigarettes obviously, but what fraction of those deaths could've been prevented? I would venture to guess at least half. If anything else were causing these deaths you know we would've done something about it by now. But the fact that it "infringes" on smokers' rights has not allowed us to do so. That leads to my second point.
2) Freedom of Choice. In the status quo, the smokers have complete freedom of choice. The non-smokers, however, have theirs severely limited. If 3 of the 5 restaurants in town allow smoking and I don't want to get carcinogens with my meal, that severely limits my freedom to eat where I like. The most important thing to keep in mind though is that if we were to pass such a bill the smokers would retain their rights and the non-smokers would regain theirs. Reason being, we're not banning smoking entirely. This isn't prohibition. This is "Please don't give me cancer, I'd really rather do without." This is "Smoke in your backyard, not my breathing space." This is the polite way of saying "Stop giving innocent people cancer." Honestly, is it that hard to walk outside for a few minutes if you can't make it through a meal without a cigarette? And simply by doing that maybe you can spare some families the pain of cancer. I'd say that's a fair trade.
3) Restaurants/Businesses. The truth is, non-smokers outnumber smokers, and keep that in mind. Now the idea of a restaurant and/or business is to bring in a profit by selling goods. Do the words "Provide a place for smoking" fit in there? So because restaurants/businesses serve purposes other than being a place to smoke, they'll still be bringing in profit. And remember that non-smokers outnumber smokers? That means that restaurants/businesses would not only not see a decrease in profit for banning smoking, but they would most likely see an increase. If 3 of 5 restaurants are still allowing smoking and they change that, they would open themselves up to more business. And all the smokers would have to do would be a) survive a meal without a cigarette or b) step outside for a few minutes.
Basically we would only see positive effects from this. Nobody will be stripped of their freedom of choice anymore, and less families will suffer a loss from cancer. Benefits all around.
"An intellectual is going to have doubts, for example, about a fundamentalist religious doctrine that admits no doubt, about an imposed political system that allows no doubt, about a perfect aesthetic that has no room for doubt." ~ Antonio Tabucchi
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