Am I the only non-smoker who thinks "smoking bans" are a bunch of BS?

[pvn]

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So say you. I think a town, with support of majority voters, has the right to pass some ordinances. Similarly, the several states have the right to create laws.

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A town is not an actor.

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I am unsure about this.

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Can you shake hands with "a town"? Can you call "a town" up on the phone and invite it over for dinner?

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A town doesn't "pass ordinances". A group of people certainly has a right to agree upon some rules for interactions.

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And if they can't agree, and their wishes conflict, somnetimes majority rule takes precedence.

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More people like coke than pepsi. This doesn't necessitate imposition of a prohibition on Pepsi.

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They don't have any right to impose those rules on other people who don't agree.

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Werll, non-smokers can say the same thing, that smokers don't have any right to impose a smoky environment on those that don't agree. I don't fully buy the "they can just go somewhere else" rebuttal.

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You're right, smokers don't have any right to impose that environment. But property owners DO have a right to controll association on their own property.

[elwoodblues]

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Can you shake hands with "a town"? Can you call "a town" up on the phone and invite it over for dinner?


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Because those are the definitional characteristics of an "actor"

[HeavilyArmed]

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This is nanny state thinking at its apex. Employees are too stupid to choose where they work, a smokey bar or a smoke free environment.

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You are simply using slogans to make your point. Employees simply don't have the choice you think they have. There stupidity, as you call it, may extend to putting them at risk to support their families.

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I think this is the point several in this thread are neglecting. Employees cannot change jobs as easily as they can change what they're having for dinner tonight. Also, what people may not realize is that there used to be NO CHOICE, since before the bans came along, smoking was everywhere: inessentially every bar, restaurant, workplace, office building, etcetera. They presume that since today there exist choices, that it was always like that, or would be like that absent the bans. Having experienced an era of smoking being nearly omnipresent, I have less faith that if the bans were lifted today, that consumers and workers would have the degree of choice that they seem to suppose would exist absent the bans. My guess is that HeavilyArmed, too, is too young to have experienced or to remember what it was like in the USA before any smoking bans came into effect.

Today, it might be that even absent the bans, there would be more choices due to greater public awareness and preferences. I doubt there be nearly as much choice as the advocates of non-bans would suppose, though.

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The market provides. There is no Las Vegas ordinance the proscribes smoking in poker rooms yet I can find them now and could not find one in 1980. I'm free to not work in a bar and I'll choose to respect property rights here. You can take away the rights of business owners and consumers as you see fit. I can't abide that and be consistent.

Smoking bans are little more than the tyrany of the majority.

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Whereas I believe that indoor smoking in bars, restaurants and in office workplaces, is tyranny of the minority.

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The largest restaurant in the world banned smoking 100% due to their preception of the market, not nanny state mandates. This was 15 years ago, McDonalds. But somehow you know better.

[John Kilduff]

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You are correct and I was mistakenly substituting "rights" for "powers".

I still think that states and local governments are entitled to utilize their powers to enact some laws and ordinances, especially when it is in keeping with the will of the majority of the people.

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Such as, e.g., slavery. Hey, the majority approved at some point, right?

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As I said, "some" laws and ordinances, not "all and any".

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"Powers" of the people means, what, exactly? Would it not encompass the power enact certain laws and ordinances through the state or local government?

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Powers, in the sense of the Constitution (at least, at the time the bill of rights was passed), means some force that needs to be restrained.

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Well, what "powers" are reserved to the people, if those powers do not include the prerogative to make local laws?

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Of course, this entire discussion is a side show, since the Constitution does not create or grant any rights at all. We don't have freedom of speech only because some words written on some piece of paper say so.

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If you believe that rights are given by God, as I do, then so. Do you believe God gives us our rights? Pragmatically speaking, though, the only reason those rights are preserved for us (are not usurped by others) is because some piece of paper does say so.

[vhawk01]

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I don’t feel sorry for the Bering Sea fisher man making $80,000 in 3 months, I don’t feel sorry for the pretty poker dealer making $200 a night nor do I feel sorry for the pretty female, asian Pai Gow dealer making $800 a night. These people have jobs that require skills or other qualifications and they are compensated for working in the hostile environment of their choosing.

I say that low income, unskilled, unattractive workers have less choice. Obviously you don't and we simply are going to disagree.

Regarding bars - I’d be more sympathetic to your arguments if everyone involved didn’t benefit so much - the customers, the employees, and the owners. If the owners were losing money, that would be one thing, but they aren’t ( in aggregate ), they are making more money since the ban went into effect. I did see a study where tobacco companies lost money due to the ban, but, oh well, we were discussing bars. Evidently, when people are smoking less, they are drinking more. Ironically, by forcing all bars to comply, the State forced all bars to make more money. If the State hadn’t enacted these laws, it would have been tough for bar owners to cartelize in so efficient a manner.

link to brief of California board of Equalization reports


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CURRENT STATUS OF SMOKE-FREE BARS IN CALIFORNIA

On January 1, 1998, the final component of the California Smoke-free Workplace Act, Labor Code 6404.5 (formerly known as AB 13) went into effect. It mandated that bars, restaurants with bars, and gaming clubs-- including casinos, bingo parlors and card rooms---join virtually all other places of employment in California by prohibiting smoking indoors.

Nearly five years after the Smoke free Workplace Act went into effect, the economic effects of the legislation are clear and positive.
¨ COMPLIANCE IS HIGH
Reliable estimates based upon on-site bar observations, place sustained overall compliance with Labor Code 6404.5 at 90% for all bars, taverns, gaming clubs and restaurants with bars, statewide. Enforcement activities are taking place in every county in California at municipal and/or county levels. (Compliance estimates are obtained from municipal and countywide code enforcement agencies, county health departments, and non-profit health organizations that monitor bar compliance in California 1999-2000)

¨ REVENUES ARE UP
State of California Board of Equalization sales tax figures prove that Taxable Annual Sales for bars and restaurants increased by nearly 6% during 1998 as compared to 1997; and revenues for 1999 increased over 1998 figures by more than 8%. Sales for these establishments went up again in 2000 by 9.8%. Even with an overall downturn for other sectors of the economy in 2001, taxable sales reported by bars and restaurants increased again in the first quarter of 2001 by 6.9% over revenues in 2000. (California State Board of Equalization-November March 2001)

¨ CALIFORNIANS BELIEVE IN IT
88.7% of Californians agree that all indoor work sites should be smoke-free, including bars. Since January 1, 1998 when smoke-free bars became law, several statewide public opinion polls including an American Cancer Society-sponsored poll, several Field Research Corporation Polls and a Los Angeles Times Poll found that Californians - including bar patrons - overwhelmingly support the current law banning smoking in bars, restaurants, taverns, gaming clubs, casinos and bingo parlors. (1997, California Adult Tobacco Survey, CDHS)

¨ EVEN TOURISTS LIKE IT
Tourism in the state has not been affected negatively by California’s Smoke-Free Workplace Act despite the tobacco industry’s dire predictions. In fact, California continues to be the most visited state in America. (California Trade & Commerce Agency-1998 & BREATH-1999)

¨ WORKER HEALTH HAS IMPROVED
The health of bar staff has improved as a result of the California Smoke-free Workplace Law. A University of California-San Francisco study of bartenders revealed that 59% who had symptoms of respiratory problems and impaired lung capacity before the law took effect showed a significant decrease in symptoms and improved lung capacity when they were interviewed and tested after the law took effect. (Journal of the American Medical Association-JAMA-December 9, 1998)

¨ OUR WORKFORCE IS PROTECTED
Over 800,000 hospitality employees who were unprotected prior to January 1, 1998, are now guaranteed a smoke-free workplace under Labor Code 6404.5. In 1990, only 35% of California workers were protected from secondhand smoke. In 2000, over 90% were protected. (California Department of Health Services-Tobacco Control Section-2000)




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unless bar owners have some obsession with getting non-smokers to have smoke blown in their face, what benefit in this situation does cartelization have?


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You guys are tough. People are going to go to the bars where the rowdiest, loosest women are. Here in Idaho, where we don’t have smoking bans, those bars would be the smoking bars. Non smoking bars do ok, but they are business MAN hangouts mostly. Hence, single bar owners don’t have a large incentive to make their establishment non smoking for fear that they will lose business because people congregate to other bars.
However if someone forces all bars to become non-smoking, then the loose rowdy women are still going to hang out at whatever club has the best music, only while the females are dancing with themselves, the men are going to drink even more because they can’t smoke. Forcing the hapless bar owners to make more money.

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This post scares me a lot.

[John Kilduff]

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This is nanny state thinking at its apex. Employees are too stupid to choose where they work, a smokey bar or a smoke free environment.

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You are simply using slogans to make your point. Employees simply don't have the choice you think they have. There stupidity, as you call it, may extend to putting them at risk to support their families.

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I think this is the point several in this thread are neglecting. Employees cannot change jobs as easily as they can change what they're having for dinner tonight. Also, what people may not realize is that there used to be NO CHOICE, since before the bans came along, smoking was everywhere: inessentially every bar, restaurant, workplace, office building, etcetera. They presume that since today there exist choices, that it was always like that, or would be like that absent the bans. Having experienced an era of smoking being nearly omnipresent, I have less faith that if the bans were lifted today, that consumers and workers would have the degree of choice that they seem to suppose would exist absent the bans. My guess is that HeavilyArmed, too, is too young to have experienced or to remember what it was like in the USA before any smoking bans came into effect.

Today, it might be that even absent the bans, there would be more choices due to greater public awareness and preferences. I doubt there be nearly as much choice as the advocates of non-bans would suppose, though.

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The market provides. There is no Las Vegas ordinance the proscribes smoking in poker rooms yet I can find them now and could not find one in 1980. I'm free to not work in a bar and I'll choose to respect property rights here. You can take away the rights of business owners and consumers as you see fit. I can't abide that and be consistent.

Smoking bans are little more than the tyrany of the majority.

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Whereas I believe that indoor smoking in bars, restaurants and in office workplaces, is tyranny of the minority.

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The largest restaurant in the world banned smoking 100% due to their preception of the market, not nanny state mandates. This was 15 years ago, McDonalds. But somehow you know better.

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This was well after the first bans were already taking place, wasn't it? Anyway, I'm not saying that I KNOW that there would be little choice absent bans today: I'm saying that WE DON'T KNOW how much choice there would be. And I think that's a true statement, don't you?

[vhawk01]

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Ah, but it's not that simple (or at least it didn't used to be that simple, before non-smoking became a popular policy). A relative handful of smokers, scattered around a restaurant, or a town, or a city, or a state, or a country, possessed the capability to make life unpleasant and unhealthful for every non-smoker in every place of public accomodation everywhere.

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Of course it's that simple. If you walk into a place and smell the faintest waft of smoke, leave. That's how you can send a message to business owners if you feel they're neglecting your desires.

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"Sending a message " didn't do the trick for many decades. You are likely too young to have experienced it, though. It won't help you much if "the market" takes 70 years to come around to your way of thinking and you get cancer from secondhand smoke in the meantime.

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It's sort of like your neighbor playing Led Zeppelin at concert hall volume...

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No, and it's not even close. My neighbors' smoking doesn't affect me unless I've chosen to be there.Just like someone in a bar's smoking doesn't affect me unless I've chosen to be there.

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But smokers monopolized all bars and restaurants with their presence and smoke. Like I said, there didn't used to be a choice: Smoking was taken for granted virtually everywhere. Again, I'm guessing you're too young to have experienced that.

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Clearly my neighbor blasting music will affect me whether I've chosen to be in his house or not. Are you now for criminalizing smoking within one's own home?

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I favor bans in places of indoor public accomodation.

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I would be opposed to the bar simply venting its smoke into the air because now people who have not chosen to expose themselves to cigarette smoke are forced to deal with it.

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Once the smoke is out-of-doors it disperses quickly, usually. Secondhand smoking generally refers to something that occurs indoors. Have you ever been to a large automobile dealer's auction? The fumes indoors are what are brutal, not the air outside.

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Let me see if I understand something: under AC, you have the moral right to do anything if it does not harm or coerce others, is that correct? Well, smoking around others indoors does not fit into that category because it does harm others.

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With some caveats, such as being able to hold a boxing tournament on your property. I also think you have the right to set the rules on your property and if others don't like those rules, they can leave.

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Secondhand smoke on harms more people than does a boxing tournament. It is the harm to others that defines this category of activity for purposes of this argument.

Thanks for your responses.

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Your arguments are all self-refuting. If this objection to secondhand smoke was really as prevalent and powerful as you claim it is, I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that there weren't numerous non-smoking establishments already.

You simply cannot make an argument that a smoking ban is a solution to a real problem, if that problem is patrons who would prefer a smoke-free establishment. If this was a real problem, there would already BE a solution. Perhaps in some places there is. These bans are, by their very nature, incorrect. The only argument that isn't laughable is the health code/building code line of reasoning. I still think its wrong, for reasons that have already been explained in this thread.

[vhawk01]

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It's sort of like your neighbor playing Led Zeppelin at concert hall volume: you don't have to live there next to him, but if you choose to do so, you'll just have to deal with it? Well, no, that's why town ordinances regarding decibel levels exist.

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NO! it's like someone doing this IN A CONCERT HALL and you demanding the volume lowered. The smoke is not wafting onto your property, you chose to go to a place where the owner allows smoking even though it makes you gag and tear up. If you don't like loud music don't go to rock concerts, if you don't like second-hand smoke don't go to smoking bars+restaurants.

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You're ignoring the related point that before the bans came into effect, essentially EVERY bar and restaurant was a smoking establishment. The choice you would have had in those days was NOT between going to a smoking or non-smoking establishment, the choice was between going out or staying home for the evening. The same applied to any sizable indoor workplace, even in office settings. Your choice would have been to go to the office to go work (and breathe others' smoke), or skip work and stay home. I'll guess that you, like BCPVP, are much too young to have experienced these choices and conditions.

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This is the strongest possible argument AGAINST your point.

[John Kilduff]

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Your arguments are all self-refuting. If this objection to secondhand smoke was really as prevalent and powerful as you claim it is, I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that there weren't numerous non-smoking establishments already.

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Well, I guess you're too young to have lived through it either, so it must not have occurred. Of course, the objections grew over decades as the evidence mounted that secondhand smoke does indeed pose risks and harms to others.

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You simply cannot make an argument that a smoking ban is a solution to a real problem, if that problem is patrons who would prefer a smoke-free establishment. If this was a real problem, there would already BE a solution. Perhaps in some places there is. These bans are, by their very nature, incorrect. The only argument that isn't laughable is the health code/building code line of reasoning. I still think its wrong, for reasons that have already been explained in this thread.


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I think you're putting too much faith in the notion that owners would automatically widely cater to non-smoking clientele at the expense of their smoking clientele. As far as owners were concerned, for many decades, they could and did have both clienteles. I think you're also putting too much faith in the notion that the market promptly provides a solution to every chronic problem. Some chronic problems are not solved by the market for many years or many decades. The market is not an instant fix-all for everything.

[vhawk01]

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Your arguments are all self-refuting. If this objection to secondhand smoke was really as prevalent and powerful as you claim it is, I find it IMPOSSIBLE to believe that there weren't numerous non-smoking establishments already.

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Well, I guess you're too young to have lived through it either, so it must not have occurred. Of course, the objections grew over decades as the evidence mounted that secondhand smoke does indeed pose risks and harms to others.

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You simply cannot make an argument that a smoking ban is a solution to a real problem, if that problem is patrons who would prefer a smoke-free establishment. If this was a real problem, there would already BE a solution. Perhaps in some places there is. These bans are, by their very nature, incorrect. The only argument that isn't laughable is the health code/building code line of reasoning. I still think its wrong, for reasons that have already been explained in this thread.


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I think you're putting too much faith in the notion that owners would automatically widely cater to non-smoking clientele at the expense of their smoking clientele. As far as owners were concerned, for many decades, they could and did have both clienteles. I think you're also putting too much faith in the notion that the market promptly provides a solution to every chronic problem. Some chronic problems are not solved by the market for many years or many decades. The market is not an instant fix-all for everything.

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You've got it backwards. You are just assuming you are correct, and then using the fact that these non-smoking places never materialized as evidence that something needed to be done. But thats not what it means at all. The fact that these places never materialized is simply evidence that your PREMISES are wrong. Non-smokers really don't care that much about being around smokers. They probably like to whine about it, but that doesn't really mean much. I whine about a lot of things, but the things I really care about are demonstrated by my actions.

I'm putting too much faith in the idea that business owners like to make as much money as they can? I doubt it. Sure, for decades they had access to both markets. But surely it isn't hard to see how I could absolutely destroy my competition if I catered to this widespread, deep and burning need that all these non-smokers have, right? I don't HAVE to do it to make a living, but why wouldn't I WANT to do it? I don't HAVE to have buffalo wings on the menu either.