Comments on: Smoking in Public

By: mon

mon — Thu, 22 Apr 2004 11:41:32 +0000

Ok, I do agree it’s an issue of workers, but what if the total ban results in less people going to pubs, therefore more pub workers losing jobs? I just think the option of a separate smoking area would have been a wiser route. The law could also require pub/restaurant owners not to demand employees work in the smoking area if they don’t want to. You could have all sort of strict regulations to ensure both workers and customers are not exposed to smoke, and still allow the smokers in, and the owners to avoid the risk of losing revenue. Everybody could have been happy. When you have the option of a compromise that satisfies everybody, it just doesn’t make sense to discard it. That’s what I don’t understand. Unless of course, the fanfare of the campaigs against smokers – rather than against cigarette makers… who are allowed to add all sorts of crap to tobacco and get away with it – is more important than practical results. I grew up in an industrial area where the cancer and leukemia rate is three times as much as average, especially in children. I’ve never seen anyone closing down plants that pump out tons of filth each day. They just shift the limits in regulations. You never get radical bans there. What about those workers, and people living in highly industrial areas? If only bans motivated by health concerns were more consistent. Instead, it just seems like smoking has taken absolute precedence over all concerns about pollution. That’s one of the things I find most offputting. Not the ban itself, but the ways in which it’s used to overshadow other environmental concerns. I think that’s a dangerous trend.

By: Keith Gaughan

Keith Gaughan — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 19:07:06 +0000

why in Ireland of all places didn’t they think of a ban that allowed for a compromise solution for both pub/restaurant owners and customers – ie. require those pubs and restaurants who do want to keep allowing some of their customers to smoke inside to equip their places with separate rooms and specific air filtering systems. Bar and restaurant workers didn’t want it. It’s a workplace ban (though some institutions seem to be extending it with gusto: here in CIT, you can’t even smoke outside unless it’s in a smoking shelter!), and they didn’t feel they should be singled out. I don’t blame them, quite frankly. Now, who I feel sorry for are the lorry drivers and salespeople who’s vehicles are their workplace. They’re the only person there, and they’re not harming anybody else.

By: mon

mon — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 12:35:54 +0000

Now a serious question: why in Ireland of all places didn’t they think of a ban that allowed for a compromise solution for both pub/restaurant owners and customers – ie. require those pubs and restaurants who do want to keep allowing some of their customers to smoke inside to equip their places with separate rooms and specific air filtering systems. That’s more expensive for owners, but they could be given that option too, as it’s been done in other European countries. Why the full ban instead? Was the alternative ever discussed?

By: mon

mon — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 12:01:37 +0000

God, I love Europe. Nah, Europe is caving in to the control freaks too. The last smokers’ haven is the Middle East. But not for long! The day Baghdad gets a smoking ban, that’s when you’ll know it’s been truly liberated.

By: mon

mon — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 11:56:39 +0000

Hey Mon: You sound really tense. I think maybe you need a cigarette. Heh, how did I not see that coming. But no thanks, Kieran, I don’t smoke. I happen to dislike cigarettes as much as you do. I just don’t automatically dislike people who smoke, you know. I don’t even see all these rude smokers puffing in people’s faces all the time were it not for a ban. I must have been lucky. —— sennoma: if that wasn’t clear already, the childish analogies are not my own, I was only mocking them. They are being made by those take a view of legislation on health concerns that is a bit too authoritarian and moralistic for my liking.

By: clew

clew — Wed, 21 Apr 2004 00:05:36 +0000

I’d like there to be a smoking-premises license expensive enough that a reasonable number of restaurants didn’t have one. I’d like the money gathered to be put into building smokers’ shelters in public places, to keep the exiled folk out of the rain and keep their smoke out of my lungs.

By: Decnavda

Decnavda — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 19:55:26 +0000

Second, all the smokers have been driven out on the street. You must now run a puffing gauntlet outside of hotels, restaurants and bars. I live in San Francisco. That was a serious problem here in the mid-Nineties after we instituted a similar ban. For the past several years, however, that has not been a problem at all, and it is extremely rare to smell cigarette smoke even outside where permitted. I don’t exactly know why, as we have not changed the laws, but guess the smokers have adapted in ways that that are good for the rest us. Public smoking is rude shock for me when I go back to visit realtives in Virginia.

By: jdsm

jdsm — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 17:53:32 +0000

The problem with the whole banning smoking debate is that people think it’s about morality and rights, which it isn’t. It’s about pragmatic self-interest. For years and years smokers have been culturally dominant and have used that dominance to impose their habit on other people. Now enough people don’t smoke that the dominance is reduced and they’re using whatever arguments they can to make sure they don’t have to deal with the smoke anymore. People talking about the rights of bartenders and the rights of smokers is a complete red-herring. Non-smokers don’t give a fuck about rights anymore than smokers care about consistency and slippery slope arguments – it’s a fight for self-interest by other means. As a non-smoker I’m glad we’re winning at last. It makes the world a nicer place for me.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 17:29:27 +0000

Drat the stupid thing! I got an error message and looked in a new window to see if it had posted, and it hadn’t, I swear it hadn’t! So I posted again, and it had – twenty minutes ago. Wretched lying dog.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 17:25:49 +0000

“the habit tends to be rightly regarded by smokers and non-smokers alike as foul and inappropriate, like spitting indoors.” I must be awfully fussy – I think spitting is pretty damn foul and inappropriate (and dangerous, if you keep TB and how it’s transmitted in mind) even outdoors. Little heaps of phlegm on the pavement are not my favourite thing.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 17:03:44 +0000

By: sennoma

sennoma — Tue, 20 Apr 2004 01:31:14 +0000

It’d be so fantastic if every respectable citizen took upon themselves the task of educating those irresponsible freaks who don’t know what self-restraint is. What would really be fantastic is if all of these responsible smokers who know all about self-restraint would resist lighting up in bus stations, public porch spaces and (my favourite) right outside various exits, right in front of the “NO SMOKING” sign. It would be wonderful if these enlightened non-addicts, who could stop any time they choose and certainly don’t HAVE to light up the moment they set foot out of doors, would pause to consider the effect on others of their clouds of noxious effluvia. Until they show signs of being capable of that, however, I vote with Kieran for the sad little sealed rooms. (It would also be nice if people would stop with the childish analogies—all those criminals who eat and drink and get fat and smoke and do drugs and eat smarties and get rotting teeth [are] really hurting the healthcare system—but one can only hope for so much.)

By: Keith's Dumb Friend

Keith's Dumb Friend — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 23:41:37 +0000

Last year, by happenstance, I flew from Dulles to Copenhagen. At Dulles, I was in the glass smoking cage with the other degenerates. Looking around, it seemed that everyone in the room just happened off their tractors. Eight hours later, viola, I am at the airport in Copenhagen where the beautiful people openly smoked in the airport (while drinking delicious lattes), with kids in tow. God, I love Europe.

By: Kieran Healy

Kieran Healy — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 22:10:31 +0000

But why keep it to yourself? You should reveal your precious insights to those dirty addicts each time you spot them, I’m sure they’d be so grateful. It’d be so fantastic if every respectable citizen took upon themselves the task of educating those irresponsible freaks who don’t know what self-restraint is. Hey Mon: You sound really tense. I think maybe you need a cigarette.

By: Abiola Lapite

Abiola Lapite — Mon, 19 Apr 2004 21:24:12 +0000

——-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE——- Hash: SHA1 “smoke more at home in the presence of their children, who will in ten years time duly sue the government for the asthma they wouldn’t have caught had it not been for the government’s ban on smoking in private, publicly accessible property” I’m not enthusiastic about government-imposed smoking bans myself, but surely any blame that ought to accrue here ought to be on the heads of the incredibly selfish parents who are willing to poison their own children for the sake of their frankly disgusting drug addiction? All political correctness aside, cigarette smokers are just as much junkies as the worst crackhead or heroine fiend on the street corner. I don’t see that they have anything whatsoever to be proud about with their habit. ——-BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE——- Version: GnuPG v1.2.4 (MingW32) – GPGshell v3.10 Comment: My Public Key is at the following URL: Comment: http://www.alapite.net/pgp/AbiolaLapite.txt iD8DBQFAhDVXOgWD1ZKzuwkRAnoPAJ0RCHlgdlxRLVtdR5CuZ2TDVcVCYQCfYh3u aP58JKZ8KkIFhbzcB7ZVlS4= =Hp17——-END PGP SIGNATURE——-