A strange side effect...

[Grudge]

But I don't buy the excuse of cigarettes being readily available when you were a kid for you having the right to smoke around me. It's nobody else's fault you're addicted. It certainly isn't mine and I shouldn't have to pay for it.

/thread

[Peenyuh]

1. Cars operate outside, not in restaurants. Comparing the exhaust of a car on the road and the smoke at the table next to me is illogical.

No, it isn't. When there was separated smoking areas in restaurants and bars, the second hand smoke was effectively the same as a car driving out on the street. But that wasn't good enough. :roll eyes:

2. Even if it was a logical argument, cars already have emissions standards and regulations, so I guess we agree that cigarette smoking should as well, right?

Cigarettes DO have emissions standards and regulations.

3. Regardless, I have no issue with you smoking on the street, and don't suggest banning that. When I start running my car in the restaurant next to where you're sitting, then we'll talk.

With ventilation in most restaurants, the ppm of toxins from a cigarette are as innocuous as the fumes of the vehicles driving into the parking lot.

4. Cigarette smoke contains more CO than car exhaust, and more toxins, iirc.

Now this is just plain stupid. If You are locked in a sealed room with a cigarette, you will walk out of there alive. Not the same with a running vehicle.

5. Cars serve a purpose, and I'm willing to make a slight risk to my health for that necessary evil. Smoking is pointless and I am not willing to risk cancer when I'll I'm going to get from it at the end of the day is a vile and permeating stench.

You are risking cancer whether or not you are exposed to cigarettes. Don't start quoting statistic, because they are meaningless. (i.e. 40,000 "saved lives") Also, my smoking DOES serve a purpose. It keeps me from choking the shit outta rude, insensitive, ignorant people. Why, my smoking alone saves 322 lives every year.

6. I don't drive my car more than two or three times a month anyway. So based on your post, that means you're going to smoke only two or three times a month, too, right?

No. It's shit or get off the pot. No half measures. Isn't what that talk earlier in the thread was? Something about outlawing cigarettes? I forgot it already and it wasn't worth rereading the whole thread again.

[Peenyuh]

Lol... yes lets compare a mode of transport that has become essential to a lot of people in their daily lives (eg traveling to work) to an addictive drug that causes health problems in the user and those around them (particularly young children).
Not to mention that it can make an entire room of people stink of rancid smoke for no better reason than to satisfy some selfish bastard's cravings.

I take it Peenyuh doesn't have to drive to the job that supports him and his family then...

You are an idiot.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

Hahaha Peenyuh is a retard.

[Peenyuh]

Hahaha Peenyuh is a retard.

And you, sir, are a sheep.

[Dark Metal]

He's always been a retard.

[Peenyuh]

He's always been a retard.

And have you always been gay?

[Fender]

lol a gay remark

That's nearly Godwin's law. Maybe we should call it Pennyuh's law. As an Internet discussion grows longer, the odds of someone calling someone else a fag approach one. Whoever do so automatically loses.

[Dark Metal]

He's always been a retard.

And have you always been gay?

No, but I appreciate the offer.

[Dr_Watson]

Smoking apparently prevents the use of apt analogies in this thread.

How about you walk into a bar that allows the serving staff to wear bondage gear and whip wanting customers and then complain rather than go to an establishment that better suits your tastes.

First of all, if you go to a bondage bar, then you are choosing it based on the service they provide. That is, if I just want a drink, I'm not going to go to a dungeon. If I want to get whipped, then yes, I will go there. Likewise, if I want to inhale smoke, I'll go to a hookah bar, and not a regular restaurant. I choose to frequent restaurants because I want to enjoy a meal there, not because I'm expecting to smoke.

A restaurant that allows smoking is the same as one that allows their staff to whip the customers. If either activity offends you, both have the same solution; go somewhere else.

[Dr_Watson]

As far as the laws here:
In Nashville (like most places), restaurants and bars have always had the ability to decide whether to have a smoking section or not. Well before the bans went into effect, there were already plenty of restaurants that did not have smoking sections (I have a friend who is allergic to something in cigarette smoke, so I've been to quite a few of them).

they tried fucking with food ratios here... but now NY is like CA. 99.9% ban for any establishment that has employees.
Only exempts owner-operated small businesses.
has an odd side effect in bar-filled neighborhoods, the cluster of people smoking outside causes the people who live in the vacinity to bitch about the amount of drunk people loitering in the street and that the cloud of smoke wafts into open windows.

[Peenyuh]

lol a gay remark

That's nearly Godwin's law. Maybe we should call it Pennyuh's law. As an Internet discussion grows longer, the odds of someone calling someone else a fag approach one. Whoever do so automatically loses.

I did not define someone else's status with that post, I simply inquired as to the duration of said status.

Also, if "Peenyuh's" law holds true, and is accepted as such in this forum, it indicates my pwnage of the first few threads I posted here. Such success deserves my custom icon request to be granted forthwith.

u fag

[+JuggerNaut+]

[vesp]

[LawL]

I miss smoking in bars and restaurants...

It's hard to get off the stool to go have one once you've have too many...

Jesus Christ, the thought of your fat, ugly, drunken Goth ass trolloping all over a pub stool with a cigarette hanging out of its mouth is literally terrifying.

[R00k]

As far as the laws here:
In Nashville (like most places), restaurants and bars have always had the ability to decide whether to have a smoking section or not. Well before the bans went into effect, there were already plenty of restaurants that did not have smoking sections (I have a friend who is allergic to something in cigarette smoke, so I've been to quite a few of them).

they tried fucking with food ratios here... but now NY is like CA. 99.9% ban for any establishment that has employees.
Only exempts owner-operated small businesses.
has an odd side effect in bar-filled neighborhoods, the cluster of people smoking outside causes the people who live in the vacinity to bitch about the amount of drunk people loitering in the street and that the cloud of smoke wafts into open windows.

The law should have said that, if your business allows people to smoke, then the smokers must be separated from everyone else in such a way that none of the other customers would be at risk of second hand smoke. If that had passed, then a lot of businesses would have stopped allowing smoking altogether to avoid the cost of making changes to their building. The rest would still allow smoking, but the non-smokers wouldn't ever have to deal with it.

But that would make too much sense.

[HM-PuFFNSTuFF]

The law should have said that, if your business allows people to smoke, then the smokers must be separated from everyone else in such a way that none of the other customers would be at risk of second hand smoke. If that had passed, then a lot of businesses would have stopped allowing smoking altogether to avoid the cost of making changes to their building. The rest would still allow smoking, but the non-smokers wouldn't ever have to deal with it.

But that would make too much sense.

Employees have a right to a safe work place and that includes not being exposed to other people's second hand smoke. So really your solution should include the stipulation that the smoking area is not serviced.

[Grudge]

that was actually the main reason behind the ban over here

actually you can still smoke in a bar or a restaurant here, but you have to do it in a separate, ventilated room where you cannot eat or drink

many bars built glassed-in "cages" where non-smokers can stand outside, drink a beer and point and laugh at the losers stuck in the tiny, smoke filled space (much like you do at the zoo)

[R00k]

The law should have said that, if your business allows people to smoke, then the smokers must be separated from everyone else in such a way that none of the other customers would be at risk of second hand smoke. If that had passed, then a lot of businesses would have stopped allowing smoking altogether to avoid the cost of making changes to their building. The rest would still allow smoking, but the non-smokers wouldn't ever have to deal with it.

But that would make too much sense.

Employees have a right to a safe work place and that includes not being exposed to other people's second hand smoke. So really your solution should include the stipulation that the smoking area is not serviced.

That's certainly true - I wouldn't have any problem with that.

With all these requirements, I'm sure very few businesses would go to the trouble of having this kind of smoking area, and the people who have supported legislation would probably get exactly what they were wanting from it. And it wouldn't have to involve heavy-handed legislation that unnecessarily removes choice for businesses - which is the only part of all this I have a beef with.

[Shmee]

Nobody's saying you have to pay -- at least that's not what I'm saying. I'm saying that the government is in the wrong here for at least two reasons:
1) The stated/accepted reason for these laws is that smoke causes cancer, even second-hand. If that's really the case, and the government is finally at a point where it's ready to make statements like that, then how is anything short of outlawing them any kind of solution? It's not like they have any medical benefit - all they do is stink and cause cancer.
2) The government is banning people from smoking on, or near, the property of certain kinds of businesses, without the businesses having any say in that decision. That is wrong.

I may be a smoker, but I don't smoke in my own house because I don't want my house to stink like smoke. I don't blame other people for not wanting to smell like it, and I certainly don't blame people who don't want their kids to be around it. But the decision of whether a business is going to allow people to smoke or not should be made by that business -- unless the substance in question is illegal.

Bravo.

[Grudge]

I wouldn't mind a total ban on tobacco, but no politician would ever dare to suggest something like that because it would cause such a huge uproar among the smokers. And smokers vote too.

[Shmee]

Nah - fuck the people. Big tobacco would cut their lobbyist funding. THAT'S what they'd be afraid of there.