In Australia they have even banned smoking from pubs now, you get fined if you smoke in your car with a child in it, you get fined if you are smoking outside with a kid around, etc. They are working towards the fact that if they ban it everywhere then people won't smoke. Never gonna happen and is delusional. People are gonna smoke if they want to and it doesn't matter what laws are put in place. The only way to stop it is to lock all of them away and stop selling tobacco products. Restricting a person's rights is wrong no matter what that right is. The leading contributors are people that think they have the right to tell people how to live because they feel it is wrong to live that way. What is next? The freedom to speak because we don't speak properly or say what they want to hear..
"What precedent do we set when we say that the government should ban something whenever it may potentially hurt people to an undetermined degree?"
You could apply this question to any number of things the government bans, that no one questions: drunk driving, untested pharmaceutical products, hand grenades, toys with lead paint...
Personally, I love smoking bans. I've never been too fussy about being around smoke and smokers, but I love being able to go to a bar and come home without my hair reeking of stale smoke. I also like being able to taste my food in restaurants. These are shallow considerations relative to the health concerns that get argued back and forth, but they're what matter to me.
I think - and I mean this broadly, and I know there are lots of exceptions - that smokers as a body have gotten what's coming to them. If smoking had continued to be governed by any sort of code of behaviour (as I'm told it once was, earlier in the century) then there never would have been so many people out to get smokers. But the vast, vast majority of smokers, that I've encountered anyway, never ask before lighting up around non-smokers, rarely wait til after everyone has finished eating before lighting up at the table, spit in the general vicinity of other people's shoes, and don't handle any concerns raised by non-smokers well at all. (C'mon, you know you've all been there when someone has raised a concern, and had smoke blown in their face.) Then there's the littering: I know most smokers would never just fling their garbage around the streets - why are cigarette butts an exception?
I don't mean to rant or sound like a total manners prude here, but if too many people abuse a privilege (which is what it is - not a right) at the expense of others, that privilege will be taken away. On the corporate side, the fact that the companies have been caught actively lying to the public, and actively making cigarettes less healthy in order to deliberately create addiction and thus recurring customers, gives governments an easy excuse to say they are protecting people from a pretty malicious industry, whether those people being "protected" like it or not.
As a general rule, I'm not a fan of governments randomly regulating our behaviour - but man, it's hard to be sympathetic to smokers sometimes. Sorry. :P
Personally, I love smoking bans. I've never been too fussy about being around smoke and smokers, but I love being able to go to a bar and come home without my hair reeking of stale smoke. I also like being able to taste my food in restaurants. These are shallow considerations relative to the health concerns that get argued back and forth, but they're what matter to me.
But why would you need a smoke ban to be around a smoke free environment? Why not allow the owner of the pub/cafe/restaurant/club to decide? If there are so many people who think like you do (which, statisticall, there should be), i see enough economic incentives in order for a large number of pubs/cafes/restaurants/clubs to ban smoking themselves. Why the need of a government ban when there is perfectly natural mechanism that would solve the problem you mentioned, while at the same time, it would provide the smokers an environment in which they could smoke and not bother non-smokers like yourself.
But the vast, vast majority of smokers, that I've encountered anyway, never ask before lighting up around non-smokers, rarely wait til after everyone has finished eating before lighting up at the table, spit in the general vicinity of other people's shoes, and don't handle any concerns raised by non-smokers well at all.
I disagree with this but i'll play. Your argument was something along the lines of "why should they smoke at my health's expense". Having said that, why not give smokers a specific place where they can smoke without bothering you. You could even put some sort of permit bars could (notice the could, relative to my previous point) purchase. If you don't want to go to a place where there are people smoking, all you would have to do is avoid such places. If a smoker wants to go to a place where he can smoke, he'll just avoid the others.
I agree with the OP's concern here. What's stoping them with banning other stuff. What's next, Whisky, Vodka, Wine, too much salt on my steak?
There is one shortcomming with my argument thou, and that's the people who work at the place that allows smoking. I can think of several ways to overcome such obstacle in first world labour markets. No way around it in third world countries thou. At least i can't see one.
Ban is pretty new in Buenos Aires (less than 2 years). Bars that are big enough, and have separate rooms, can have a smoking room. The week after the ban was implemented the smoking rooms of most bars/pubs were packed while the non-smoking rooms were all empty. The cues outside were huge, but they couldn't let more people in because everyone wanted to go to the smoking rooms, and those ones were all at it's full capacity, despite the bar/pub, as a whole, being far from full.
I couldn't agree more with a lot of the sentiments--both pro and con smoking. I've been a non-smoker for almost 2 years now and am frustrated by the burning of my eyes and bar smell at the end of the night.
I'm not sympathetic to smokers, either.
What I am sympathetic to are business owners.
The attack has come to my home state of Wisconsin, one of the last "free" places in the United States. Somehow, they manage to have lower crime rates without gun bans, better education without exorbitant property taxes (higher than average but...), better roads without tolls...the list goes on. I digress.
Anyway, we in Wisconsin love our bars. Not because we're slobbering alcoholics, but because they're an extension of our living room; we don't go there on Friday night as much a we're there after work on Tuesday. Because of this, there's a very power group called the Tavern League of Wisconsin. I would say they're like the mafia, but without all the violence and the Italians.
They've publish a list of interesting stuff with relation to smoking bans.. I never considered looking at research that is anti-smoking-ban because, that's like align yourself with Satan inc., right?
Both sides present flawed, somewhat biased research. Here's why I'm more prone to believe the "anti-" lobby: their money isn't based on cigarettes. Think about it: millions of dollars are going to anti-smoking campaigns for the EXPRESS purpose of banning smoking. Are they fighting to make cigarettes purchase/consumption illegal? Remove the chemicals that make them addictive? Champion tax incentives for business and facilities that install proper ventilation equipment? Nope. According to Smoke-Free Wisconsin's website the goals are:
- Increase the Number of Smoke-Free Environments
Increase Tobacco Prices
Wisconsin’s Comprehensive Tobacco Control and Prevention Program
Here's my problem (and why this relates to travel). The research on particulates being released in the atmosphere by airplanes are somewhat inconclusive, but pretty damning...flights are destroying the world. I'm Joe Schmoe, and I don't travel. Someone tells me that flights destroy the environment...but its not the travelers fault. "Big Travel" like Frommer's and Rick Steve's have convinced these stupid impressionable kids that traveling is good when clearly, based on the "evidence", it is not.
But we don't have to ban travel! Oh no. Let's just tax the sh*t out of travelers and limit the number of flights that can take off. Then we can spend millions more on questionable campaigns to reeducate travelers on why traveling is bad. Yay! Everyone wins!
Except, of course, those heathen f*&king travelers.
I don't like the logic. If cigarettes are bad for everyone and everyone is better off without it, then call a spade a spade and work to ban cigarettes...not free enterprise.
[i] Final note: I wouldn't classify smoking bans with drunk driving, hand grenade, and lead paint legislation, as those issues have real clear, consistent fatality/illness numbers associated to them. For an example of the highly-publicized, incredibly-skewed secondhand smoke research, I refer you to "The Miracle of Helena".
I'll agree that the governments are completely hypocritical in increasing prices rather than just banning the stuff. If tobacco is *SO* bad for us, it should just be banned outright, rather than turned into a source of immense profit for governments who collect taxes on it.
I guess I come from a pretty different starting point than you and Kaunassian - the assumption for lefty-types in Canada is generally that regulation is the government's job, not free enterprise. So it's pretty rare that I get riled up by the government doing much of anything, so long as they don't try to muzzle the papers, mess with the voting process, or interfere with the judiciary.
Small businesses were very concerned when the bans first came in, but it's been a few years now - and, shock horror, smokers still go out and get drunk, just as often as the rest of us.
Like I said, I'm not too fussed about being around smoke, and I try not to obsess about the latest health risk. I'm pretty well resigned to getting cancer eventually however I live my life - it's what kills almost everyone in my family. But I just can't imagine allowing myself to be completely beholden to a substance like that. Man, seeing smokers huddling on the street corner outside a smoke-free bar, in -30 weather in Ottawa in January - there's no more pathetic spectacle in the city. I guess I have trouble sympathizing with "smokers rights" because I just don't see the point, or the appeal. There's got to be something better to get worked up about, doesn't there?
Joined: 01-06-07
I'm curious about peoples' opinions on smoking bans. Is an all inclusive smoking ban--such as in the case of Ireland--a good thing? Or are we, perhaps, giving up freedoms for the illusion of the "right thing"?
I am a "former smoker". One of the things I felt was great about Europe was their lack of laws restricting simple pleasures. (it was great to drink a beer and light up in Frankfurt Main Airport). This was prior to the "Smoking-ban frenzy". Now it seems that the non-smoking lobby (which, to date, seems to spend more on ad campaigns than Phillip Morris) seems to be affecting even the staunchly guarded smoke-and-wine-and-berets image of the Parisians. And to what end? What precedent do we set when we say that the government should ban something whenever it may potentially hurt people to an undetermined degree?