I don’t know what all the fuss is about. Smoking kills, not just the smoker, but every other person they infect with their habit as well. In Ottawa, we’ve had a smoking ban for a few years now, and you know what, all the bars didn’t go belly up. There wasn’t a sudden rash of bans of everything else under the sun. It’s stupid argument latched onto by some smokers, crying cause they can’t have a smoke with their beer, and are too flippin fat and lazy to go stand outside for the 5 minutes it takes to have a smoke. This sudden crying out of “if you legislate anything, then we’ll all be living in Nazi germany next week”, is utter stupidity and fear mongering of the worst degree.
One of the problems with leaving it up to the individual bar/restaurant owner, whether or not they wan’t their club to be smoke free or not is that, given two paths, the owners invariably will travel down the path of least resistance (that being allowing smoking). The bar and restaurant owners have had that choice open to them for years, and the result was every flipping bar and restaurant was a smoking establishment (or had a “smoke-free section” ..yeah right, the smoke just stops at that invisible boundary between the smokers and non-smokers sections). The end result is that if left up to the individual owners, every public establishment would be a smoking establishment, and I would have no choice about whether I wanted to go to a smoking or non-smoking establishment. And I don’t believe, that choosing never to go out to a public place is really a viable choice. Maybe in some dreamland but not in the real world.
As to the smoker’s rooms. I personally would see nothing wrong with a room, with a seperate ventilation system, and entrance taking a small (note I said small) percentage of the owner’s availible space, providing tha t the staff did not have to enter the room (ie: if the fat lazy smoker wants a drink, he can get it him/herself). The problem the city of Ottawa found in it’s study of this were mostly twofold. First, not every bar owner can afford to construct a completely sealed off room on their property, meaning that some bar and restaurant owners (those with the most money and commericial space), would have a very definate leg up on the owner’s who couldn’t afford it. Secondly, there is no viable means to police whether or not an owner is forcing staff to enter a smoking room. As to the private club idea, again this creates the problem that every owner simply calls themselves a private club, and before you know, there are no longer any nonsmoking establishments.
I guess in the end, the point of my rant is that if some inconsiderate goon wants to kill him/herself slowly, great, I’m all for it, go ahead, have a blast (I don’t like having to pay their medical bills but that’s another issue, don’t like paying the medical bills of obese people either). Where I have the problem is where that same inconsiderate lout is too bloody lazy to haul his fat but out of his chair/ off of his barstool, walk the agonizing few yards to the front door, and smoke his cigarette outside, but would rather infect everybody else with his poison. If it’s not legislated, then it’ll never happen. I can barely count the number of times I’ve told some pinhead not to light up his smoke in my car or house, to get glared at like some Nazi. The point being that if smokers won’t even show the consideration to not smoke in an ex/non smokers place of residence, they sure as hell won’t be willing to not smoke in public places.
anyway, my rant my 2.5. Take it how you want.
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I’m in Swindon, don’t forget. And now Ireland has set a ‘precedent’ that various holier-than-thou groups can point to, I daresay the prevailing opinion in my recent survey is likely to be the result of folks thinking “ah cr*p, I suppose we’re next then.” But I’d need to conduct another survey to be able to confirm that suspicion and then make a sweeping statement about the vast majority of the public here based on its results.
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