NC officially bans smoking in bars / restaurants

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Well mensch, you may be absolutely right about your skepticism about the SG's numbers and I would be hard pressed to convince a numbers guy. Would a negotiated system work in the interests of all parties? Possibly.

Unfortunately that's not often how it works. When a situation is unregulated and and resists regulation, an opposing interest often attempts a remedy that is adversarial, ie smoking restriction instead of filtration and testing. You 'll only see self-regulation when the threat of uncertainty and emminance of restrictions to the status quo is clear.

At this point it would be up to some other party of interest to come up with that solution as a response to the current pendulum swing.
 
Let me flip that question back. Is there an acceptable level of orderless tasteless urine that you would find acceptable in your beer? Of course not.

In food manufacturing plants, there are government mandated (FDA)acceptable rates of insect 'parts' and rodent feces (among many, many other things) that one would likely find just as offensive as your urine example.

You've eaten those things without even knowing it. We all have at some point. They may be gross to you, but in such small amounts, they pose no health risks to you at all.

Quote all the medical journals you want with sentences using the words 'can', 'may' and 'might'. Those don't prove much of anything. While I can certainly understand why some do not want to be around any smoke at all, some tend to go a bit overboard and almost demonize it.

Show me a double blind study that proves a 15-30 minute stop in a bar or restaurant by a knife delivery guy causes any of the items that you listed, then I will believe.

:off:, but slightly related. You know what *SHOULD* be banned? Smoking in a vehicle that has children in it. Everytime I see this I want to stop my truck, get out, and smack the hell out of these people. Adults can make a choice whether to enter an establishment that allows smoking, work in a job that requires entry to an establishment that allows smoking or to associate with people that smoke. Children are not able to make these choices.
 
Let me flip that question back. Is there an acceptable level of orderless tasteless urine that you would find acceptable in your beer? Of course not.

If they had a sign posted on the door that said "We piss in the beer", I'd be fine with whatever amount of urine they wanted to use. I'd be next door drinking.

It seems that we have 2 debates going on here, and the rebuttals are getting mixed up.

Debate 1 - Private Property. I own this building and the land under it. Can I do what I want so long as it doesn't hurt those people outside of my property line? (Please don't bring up rape/cockfighting/murder as examples in this. Those are acts where someone is forced into something.)

Debate 2 - Is secondhand smoke really dangerous? Is it more dangerous than catching a whiff of exhaust from the school bus in the morning?
 
:off:, but slightly related. You know what *SHOULD* be banned? Smoking in a vehicle that has children in it. Everytime I see this I want to stop my truck, get out, and smack the hell out of these people. Adults can make a choice whether to enter an establishment that allows smoking, work in a job that requires entry to an establishment that allows smoking or to associate with people that smoke. Children are not able to make these choices.

Rockland county in NY passed a resolution in June of 2007 banning smoking in cars with children
 
My city's been smoke free for a year and a half. The bar owners fought heavily against it because smokers makes up a very large portion of the clientèle. Some even had separate smoking rooms that were blocked off by doors and well ventilated but were forced to be closed down. One in particular that's in a hotel had built a room that connected to the bar but was in the zoning for hotel and they worded it so he would have to shut it down.

I'm a non-smoker (well beyond a cigar on special occasions like new years) and much prefer the smoke free environment but I think it's ridiculous.
 
This has been a nice debate, even though it wasn't in the debate forum. Without going back and reading every single post, I think for the most part everyone has been respectful of each other's viewpoints and I appreciate that. I'm just shocked that I actually agree on something with both LGI AND Evan!.:D
 
Just because it's something that you yourself don't enjoy, doesn't mean it's okay to take away that right from other people.

Don't like it? It physically harms everyone around you.

I don't care if you smoke. I don't care if you shoot heroine into your eyesockets.

When you smoke in a restaraunt/bar, you're forcing everyone around you to smoke.
 
Don't like it? It physically harms everyone around you.

I don't care if you smoke. I don't care if you shoot heroine into your eyesockets.

When you smoke in a restaraunt/bar, you're forcing everyone around you to smoke.

The underlying theme here has been that those of us against this legislation have absolutely no problem whatsoever with establishments CHOOSING to be non smoking. If you don't want smoke, you go to a non smoking bar/restaurant and leave the smokers to go to the smoking ones.
 
Don't like it? It physically harms everyone around you.

I don't care if you smoke. I don't care if you shoot heroine into your eyesockets.

When you smoke in a restaraunt/bar, you're forcing everyone around you to smoke.

That's been used way too many times.

You can always go to a non-smoking bar where you don't have to worry about it and it doesn't affect you. By CHOOSING to go into a smoking bar, you're no longer FORCED to endure the smoke - you chose to inhale the smoke by staying in the bar and having a drink. That's not force in any way of the word.
 
The underlying theme here has been that those of us against this legislation have absolutely no problem whatsoever with establishments CHOOSING to be non smoking. If you don't want smoke, you go to a non smoking bar/restaurant and leave the smokers to go to the smoking ones.

Gonna bring it up agian: Where I lived at the time, there were no non smoking establishments. They didn't exist.
 
Gonna bring it up agian: Where I lived at the time, there were no non smoking establishments. They didn't exist.

That's up to you and bar owners. It was perfectly legal to open a non-smoking bar. Just because there isn't one, doesn't mean you need to legislate on everyone else.

There's not a KFC near my house and I love chicken. Should I rally up my chicken loving friends and lobby the government to MANDATE a KFC on every corner? Or should I encourage someone to build one or do it myself?
 
But it was a choice of the owners of these bars. There has never been a law that enforces smoking

Completely irrelevant. Its a public health law. At some point, it was legal to have rats running around your restaraunt. There was never a law advocating you had to have rats. Now its not. Its for the better health of the patrons.

MA allows "cigar bars", which can serve beer if they want. Go to one of those if you want to smoke. Open one of those if you want to have a smoking bar. Restaraunts are there to serve food, and it is their responsibility to serve the food in an environment that isn't toxic to their patrons.
 
Completely irrelevant. Its a public health law. At some point, it was legal to have rats running around your restaraunt. There was never a law advocating you had to have rats. Now its not. Its for the better health of the patrons.

Putting the rat argument aside, which is not worth discussing IMO... limiting sodium, portion calories, the use of certain types of fats, not allowing Fatty Arbuckle to order that 5th double-cheeseburger, not allowing corporate food scientists to engineer foods to make you want to come back for more... those are all for the better health of patrons too. Where does it stop?
 
Putting the rat argument aside, which is not worth discussing IMO... limiting sodium, portion calories, the use of certain types of fats, not allowing Fatty Arbuckle to order that 5th double-cheeseburger, not allowing corporate food scientists to engineer foods to make you want to come back for more... those are all for the better health of patrons too. Where does it stop?


Fatty Arbuckle having a 5th double cheesburger has no effect on me sitting next to him.. unless he craps himself or farts while doing so.
 
I agree springer! Why can't everyone just be the lemings we're supposed to be and stand in line for our cup of the special Kool-Aid?
 
Its not about public demand though, isn't it about property rights? Shouldn't a restraunt owner have the right to have rats? Its a slipperly slope. Where does it end?

Clearly, it began at bathroom exhaust fans, and ultimately, it ends at homebrew.
 
Fatty Arbuckle having a 5th double cheesburger has no effect on me sitting next to him.. unless he craps himself or farts while doing so.

Well, I guess you're right about that.;)

My point is that allowing the government to make decisions for me regarding what I can and can't do in what is healthy and what isn't would tell me that I'm just intellectually lazy and unwilling to bear self-responsibility.
 
My point is that allowing the government to make decisions for me regarding what I can and can't do in what is healthy and what isn't would tell me that I'm just intellectually lazy and unwilling to bear self-responsibility.

Its not about what you can or can't do. Its about what you can or can't do to someone else.
 
Before the bans in my state (was MA, now IL), I had never seen a non smoking bar, so no, that wasn't a choice.

People keep bringing this up, but it doesn't make any sense to me. You still have a choice, you just may need to go further then your used to, or open one yourself, or convince a local establishment with collective buying power.

In my city there are no resturants that serve Bunny. So is it the onerous of the collective resturant owners to start selling rabbit legs because I have a craving for deep fried longear? No, I can either go to someplace that has rabit on the menu...probably not in my state, or I can open up a rabbit serving resturant. If those aren't an option, then it is up to me to find a resturant that is receptive to doing a bunny special once a week, or something like that.
 
Its not about what you can or can't do. Its about what you can or can't do to someone else.

Then don't go to a smoking establishment. Look, if you read some of my previous posts, you should be able to infer that I'm not of the opinion that smoking should be allowed anywhere and everywhere. But what bothers me is that the public was virtually silent, while laws were made under the guise of worker safety. The non-smoking majority sat back and let it happen because they (dare I say, we) don't like breathing in second-hand smoke in restaurants and other public establishments.

What else could that happen to now? That's essentially how prohibition started. I fully agree that indoor public smoking should have been significantly decreased. But as I said before, there were other ways to accomplish this than to counter-act the fundamental freedoms of enterprise we enjoy in this nation.
 
Its not about public demand though, isn't it about property rights? Shouldn't a restraunt owner have the right to have rats? Its a slipperly slope. Where does it end?

While I quit smoking over a year ago, I feel that if I want to open a bar that caters to smokers who want to bring their pets I should be allowed to. We are way past half way down the slippery slope

Wow my post was on page 2 and we are talking from different sides of the argument
 
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