HB 1131, introduced by Rep. Charlie Brown, has moved out of committee in (1) public places; (2) enclosed areas of a place of employment; and (3) certain state vehicles. (I recently mentioned a similar bill, SB 95, introduced in the Senate.) The Journal & Courier has an article by Eric Weddle on the proposed ban and how it differs from the smoking bans in Lafayette and West Lafayette.
Nothing seems to bring out the rhetoric of liberty and freedom quite like the prospect of having to ingest one’s tobacco in smokeless form, unless maybe it’s having to put on a seat belt. According to one commenter at the Journal & Courier, this would bring us perilously close to the government limiting the number of children we can have.
In any case, a property owner would be free to allow smoking on his or her property unless and until that owner made the decision to invite the public on to the property or use it as a place of employment; then the regulations would kick in protecting the bodily integrity of the public or the employees invited onto the property.
Anyway, that’s a legalistic explanation of the smoking ban. For my part, I’ve come to really detest breathing smokey air and getting it my hair and on my clothes. So, my reasons for preferring a smoking ban are self-interested. My dining experiences have improved quite a bit since such bans became common. It used to be, you never quite knew how effective the separation between smoking and non-smoking sections would be before you sat down to eat. Most of this could be avoided if more smokers showed some simple courtesy. Don’t smoke if your discharge is going to go in someone else’s face. When I decide to have a few beers, I don’t pee in your water. Chili afficianados tend to make an effort not to let their flatulence rip and get indignant (in the name of liberty!) when fellow patrons disapprove. So why do so many smokers think it o.k. to make only cursory efforts to avoid imposing their smoke on strangers?
I guess this is a culture war as much as anything else. My guess is that the smoking ban will pass the House and fail in the Senate.
Most small neighborhood bars do not invite certain members of the “public” to enter their establishments, especially those who enter to cause problems with their regular patrons.
I much prefer to pee in smokers’ beers instead of their water. Less confrontation that way. Besides, with most mass-produced American beers, who could tell?
I just have a really hard time caring much one way or the other about the smoking ban. It was only a moderate annoyance back when I smoked, and I do enjoy being able to eat without breathing in cigarette smoke. But I don’t see the need for a statewide law, and I really don’t see why this issue gets so much attention while other, more pressing topics go under the weather.
Uh… radar. Not weather.
It gets so much attention because it’s easy to understand and most folks seem to have an opinion. Never underestimate the “easy to understand” aspect. I remember a committee hearing where the committee was considering 2 bills, one having to do with digital signatures and encryption, and the other having to do with digging holes and hitting utility lines. The encryption bill, which struck me as more significant, received almost no discussion. Digging holes, on the other hand, seemed to require everybody’s input.
Weel, Doug, this is the Indiana General Assembly and the dictionary has the Average Hoosier Voter picture next to “simpleton.” Pander while you can…hence the same-sex marriage amendment to stop a problem that does not exist and the sugar cream pie bill last year to reward what was already gooey fun. Or did I mix those up?
Um, Bob, we’re talking bars here. A lot are quite keen to attract the sort of patron who comes in precisely to make trouble, or at least to drink himself to the point where he can’t tell the difference.
Ohio passed this as an amendment to the State Constitution. The impact was fairly localized. In Cincinnati, bars suffered because northern Kentucky bars were still smoking. The biggest problems? Clubs. AMVETS, Moose, Elks, etc… They outright defy the law in some localities, and have confrontations with police in others. For the most part, I think restaurants actually liked the amendment, as it increases turnover: nobody hangs around after the meal smoking.
And there was a cigar bar here in Cincinnati that went with the flow and survived – the Havana Martini Club. They just evolved into a music club and are doing well. They just moved cigars to the patio.
No reasonable person should mistake a bar for a health club, you know? I don’t smoke. Never have. Yet I am one of those who has made some rhetorical utterances using the word ‘liberty’.
I’ve never found myself forced into a bar. Besides, people make all sorts of offensive pronouncements in my presence that elevate my blood pressure. It’s a health hazard! So, shouldn’t we ban free speech? I mean, it’s like peeing in my beer!
I never went to bars either but I used to go to bingo parlors with my family and they were were so smoky they made me sick.I guess people build up an immunity to smoke as it kills you.
Bingo parlors! Years ago on a weekday morning, I walked into the elementary school cafeteria at my parish at the time. I was stunned — it stank of cigarette smoke strong enough to bowl you over. Truly the air was – literally – cloudy. When I commented on it, I was told it was always that way on the day after the monthly evening Bingo, held in the same room. I was instantly glad that, unlike most parishioners, my kids were enrolled in the public school. At least I was relieved of having to fight THAT battle.
Doug, if you have people kidnapping you and holding you at gunpoint, forcing you to endure a bar or restaurant with a smoky environment, you’ve got bigger problems than a smoking ban.
Nobody is forcing the property owner to use the property for a business open to the public. You can do things in your private kitchen that you can’t do in a kitchen serving food to the public. The government’s ability to regulate in the name of public safety increases when you choose to hold your property open to the public for fun and profit.
Mike Kole,
I understand and agree with your view from a customer side.
How to you explain the employee side? How do you defend the choice that a talented waiter or bartender must decide between doing what they’re good at, making a fair wage but being exposed to cancerous materials or working at something they don’t have the talent for, are paid less, and hate, but it is safer.
From my point of view, we don’t need to ban smoking in bars. We need to ban smoking around employees. If you want to create a bar that has smoking for everyone that walks in, but the bartender is behind glass on a separate HVAC system or you provide him/her a spacesuit to wear, then that’s fine.
People should have the right to smoke with other people that consent. However, someone shouldn’t have to make that choice over their paycheck, because you’re now threatening their ability to earn money over their consent to be around smoke.
Jason, people are free to work where ever they *choose*. They don’t have a right to demand that all places meet their wishes. Then again, I already told you that in the earlier thread.
Doug, if smoking is THAT dangerous, it shouldn’t be legal.
The things currently regulated (foodborne diseases, etc.) are just as harmful all the time – but not readily apparent to a customer. You protect people from what they can’t protect themselves from via government regulation, not things they can see and decide for themselves. You’re comparing two different things.
What you want to do is walk into someone’s establishment and dictate to them what legal things they should and shouldn’t allow. Since you know you’d get tossed for being an ass trying this on your own, you seek government to be an ass for you – with attendant threat of force from the police.
But the answer is really simple. Shut the hell up and leave if you don’t like the atmosphere. It must be terrible for people living with a handicap where they’re just too stupid to do that.
Here, let me update you Jason:
Jason,
There can be such things as bars that choose to be smoke-free on their own.
Bartenders and wait staff can choose to work at whatever bars or restaurants they want. If it’s a big enough deal to them, they can choose to work somewhere else.
When I was a bartender I wasn’t exactly worried about my advanced degree in bartending sciences going to waste if I couldn’t find a bar work environment to my liking. Your position is nonsense.
Again, as I have noted other times, before there were smoking restrictions, my family could rarely go out to a restaurant and be sure we could make it through a meal because of my child’s serious breathing problems. If we got there and saw there was a lot of smoke, we’d leave before we were seated. After we sat down, if someone lit up anywhere half-way near us, she would get sick and we would have to change seats or leave. The management never asked the smoker to put out the cig, but on occasion they did let us know that her coughing was “bothering” people. We learned where we could and could not go to eat. And there were VERY few places where we could. Our money was just as good as the money of smokers and plenty of businesses did not get our business because we could not endure a meal in their establishments. And, of course, this was not just the situation at restaurants. It could happen anywhere, but generally at restaurants it’s more inconvenient to leave abruptly.
Michaelk42, I’m happy for you that you and your loved ones have not had this experience, but you unless you have, you are just not going to get why this is a big deal. Your right to go anywhere you want and disregard others’ needs is not greater than theirs to go places and expect their well-being to be regarded as important. You just want more “freedom” than others get in this regard. You used to have it and now you don’t and you don’t think it’s fair. You are not not allowed to smoke. Please feel free to light up wherever you want as long as it doesn’t get into someone else’s lungs.
PS: I don’t hate smokers, I feel for them. I drove my dad to the hospital as he was in the middle of having a heart attack and dragging on his last cigarette all the way. He did have enough awareness to hang his head out the window so as not to get the smoke in my car, however. Poor guy, he was addicted.
Your daughter’s medical condition limits her freedom, not any human agency. You attempt to mis-state the argument to your benefit – this is not about disregarding other’s needs- it’s about respecting the rights of property owners. I stopped smoking, and don’t anymore. This isn’t about my personal rights, it’s about everyone’s. So your statements about my wanting “more freedom” are not only ridiculous but false.
In fact, the opposite is true. You don’t have the right to go into any establishment you choose and demand that the atmosphere be changed to your liking, but you apparently want to get the special right.
I understand why you feel as you do. But limiting everyone else’s freedoms based on appeals to emotion isn’t how laws should be made.
About your PS: a) who cares, it’s not relevant to this discussion b) good to know he was still allowed to make his own decisions.
Michaelk42..I know you and I rarely agree on anything, but in this case, you are spot on. Well said.
Again, feel free to light up wherever you want as long as it doesn’t get into someone else’s lungs.
Tim, you’d be surprised at me on some subjects, I think.
Mary, feel free to dictate this to whoever you’d like, on your own property.
Michaelk42,
I assume, by what you have said, that you oppose the existence of the Mine Safety and Health Administration. Why should the government tell the mine owners how to run their mine? After all, the miners can work somewhere else if they think the work is unsafe, right?
I suppose OSHA is also something to be eliminated.
You call my view nonsense and say I’m being an ass because I want service workers to have the same protections as other workers?
So, what way is it? Will the government tell property owners what to do or not?
@Jason
And now you’re drawing it to a ridiculous extreme.
Strangely, coal dust isn’t a legal product sold and used the same way as cigarettes. *These two things are not the same.* Do try to keep it in mind.
And yes, mine workers can choose to work somewhere else – mine work is inherently dangerous to some extent even with OSHA regulations.
You’re damn right I’m calling your view nonsense – because it is – and yes you’re an ass to try and pass off your trying to legislate your preference as somehow being a noble cause to protect people who never asked for your help.
Unless you get off on imagining yourself to be some sort of great, selfless protector of the downtrodden who can’t fend for themselves.
I and my “service worker” friends had a message for people like you, Jason:
Piss off, we don’t need you to save us, and we didn’t ask you to.
You don’t have to deal with the loss of income when business goes down, or moves to less restrictive areas. You won’t lose your job if business doesn’t pick back up.
You get to feel better about yourself for “helping” us though. Unless of course you’re really just in it to get your way.
“So, what way is it? Will the government tell property owners what to do or not?”
BTW, logical fallacy, false dichotomy. This is not an either-or, black and white question. There is more than one option.
Doug, recall again that I grew up in Cleveland. The city was a cesspool of all manner of pollution, mostly caused by heavy industry. By your argument, the lot of it should have been banned.
Course, as it happened, most of the heavy industry went away. The air is a lot cleaner, but DAMN, the people are a lot poorer. Well, those who still live there, that is.
Well, by my argument, the government should have the authority to ban a lot of it. Whether that’s good public policy or not is another question. In some cases it probably would be, in other cases not.
It seems to me that a lot of times, the right to property is guarded more zealously than the right to bodily integrity.
Oh snap.
http://www.post-trib.com/news/2010870,ga-smoke-bill-0126.article
“As written, the bill would ban smoking in all public places except casinos, an exception Brown said he made to avoid becoming a target of gaming lobbyists. However, the bill was amended three times Monday, with Brown offering the first.
Brown’s amendment would exempt new casinos from local smoking ordinances if such a law exists in the community.”
Yes! Yes, it’s all about protecting the defenseless people who can’t (for some reason) protect their own “right to bodily integrity” by choosing where they go of their own free will.
Unless of course it’s about casino money, which is obviously more important than bartender/waitstaff’s money from income, much less “protecting people.”
Michaelk42,
I agree with you that many people that support the ban do so because they want to just go out to eat or drink and don’t want to have to make a decision about dealing with smoke. I also agree that is a BS reason for a law. If we are passing laws like that, then let’s have a law that bans Kanye West from all bar stereos since I don’t want to deal with that, either.
That said, I still think that coal mine safety and secondhand smoke safety are the same thing. The only difference is how long after the unsafe working conditions until the employees suffer. That truly is my personal motivation for it, but again, I know most others don’t share that view.
Mike,
Were you being serious? You really think it is better for people to have more money yet be surrounded by pollution?
Years ago smoking was considered normal and that meant people had to be gracious and allow smoking.If we wanted to play bingo and didn t smoke we assumed sitting in dense smoke was the price we had to pay. I remember going into a private home back in 60s and seeing a sign in living room: ‘No smoking in our home’.
That was a real shocker for those years,but it was probably about the start of the anti-smoking grassroots effort. We’ve redefined what normal is and now normal means ‘smoke free environment’ so the concept of who has the right to do what has completely shifted.
Having smoke free areas in restaurants and other place never controlled where the smoke would filter .I used to frequently ride the train from Chicago to visit my family in Champaign-Urbana,on the old IC railroad. It was heavily filled with with U of I students and every one one of them it seemed smoked the whole trip..
Those who didn’t, smelled of smoke til we had to chance to wash all our clothes. I personally think the prohibition of public smoking cannot be too strong.Smoking one place is the same as smoking everywhere.
And never did I think I would see a smoke free Wrigley FIeld.It was beyond anyone’s imagination.We usually saw a bunch of games every season.. How many countless times some one of us sat in the breeze line direct from someone smoking in another seat…and smoking meant smoking the whole game.
“Nobody is forcing the property owner to use the property for a business open to the public.”
But since it’s his property, he has a right to do so if he wishes without the state imposing restrictions on the manner in which he does it.
Yes, Lou.
Now I’m remembering, back in college, when students could smoke in class, how those of us non-smokers had to put up with it in order to be educated. I even found a cigarette burn-hole on the back of my new camel hair coat from the smoker sitting behind me. I remember it because I had a part time job while going to school so that I could have a new coat. I know, certain posters won’t believe this or will laugh at it. All I can say is, I think my property (coat) had more rights than that smoker’s (cigarette), but it didn’t work out that way. Therefore, go ban!
You’re right, but the problem isn’t with smoking–it’s with destruction of someone else’s property.
You don’t need to ban smoking to ban destruction or damage of someone else’s property.
Mary,
I had put it out of my mind that college students used to smoke during class, and professors too .Yes, people would find that hard to believe today. When I first started teaching the teachers lounge at school was so smoke-filled that I didnt go in. No one who wasnt around back then can imagine how smokers ruled the world.
People also *knew* that smoking maybe caused cancer,even in 50s, but smoking was one of those rites that was so habitual and socially accepted,or even socially necessary, that most just didnt deal with it.There had to be a movement to make people aware.
But people did believe that if they personally didnt smoke, they risked no danger.
No one was aware of the danger of ‘second hand smoke’.It wasn’t even a concept.
“You don’t need to ban smoking to ban destruction or damage of someone else’s property.”
Do my lungs count as property? I think so. They belong to me and are pretty essential.
They’re only damaging your property if you choose to go near someone else who is smoking–in which case you are consenting to the damage, since you are choosing to be there.
blah blah blah
No need to be a poor loser, Mary.
I didn’t lose. That’s your problem, you have to win or lose debate, so you have to score points. I’m just tired of engaging in non-dialogue that goes nowhere. I’ll rather take my energy to where it makes a difference.