I don't care that it might kill me- I just hate the ****ing smell. 5 minutes in a smoky room and your clothes and hair stink. It's nasty.

Or here's a thought:

Let the damned business owners make their own choice whether they want to allow smoking or not. While you continue to make the choice whether to patronize each business on a case-by-case basis.

You can choose not to patronize a business that allows their patrons to smoke. And Bob Dole can choose to patronize the ones that allow it.

Oh wait...choice is a BAD thing. Well, as long as it's not the majority's choice, anyway.

Laz I understand your bitch I really do but come on. Ok you walk into a bar that has smokers and its the smokers fault? Now if I was there i would do my best to keep the smoke away from you but come on man you walked into it and your bitching. Thats like walking into a crack house and complaining about the crack whores.

Once again, you're going to have to limit people's ability to sue. If I own a club that has some one of a kind feature and I ban smoking I'm just begging to get sued by smokers because I'm not giving them equal access to that feature. It's the other side of this ugly issue.

Exactly.

If a municipal entity wants to pass goofy laws, it's fairly easy to move to another. When states and the feds are doing it, you don't have a reasonable options other than to deal with it.

God bless Wake Village, TX!

Question: What makes shopping malls, office buildings and sports stadiums different from restaurants and bars?

Why should restaurants and bars be excluded from the same laws as those businesses?

Has attendance to sporting events decreased since smoking has been banned? Have sales at places like Nordstroms and Macy's decreased since smoking was banned in shopping malls?

What differentiates those businesses listed above from restaurants or bars?

The National Fire Fighters Association says that incidents of spontaneous combustion would be cut in half if more people used the patch.

FAX

Kind of like all the men that lined up to sue the Girl Scouts and the PEO Sisterhood when they were denied membership?

Seriously... Is there any single incidence of a smoker suing an establishment for denying them access? If Bob Dole wants to patronize the business bad enough, he can stop smoking long enough to do so.

There have been a few of those lawsuits. I believe one guy sued to allow his son onto a girl's hockey team because it was closer to their house after a girl in the same area sued to get onto a boy's team and won.

It makes me more than a little ticked to drive by a Curves and know that I can't open a gym for men only.

In 1882, the UK banned pipes made from kangaroo scrotums. There wasn't a lot of resistance to that law.

FAX

You could still do that in private clubs, though.

I'm not really sure what the complaint would be with my scenario. :shrug: Both smoking and non-smoking options would exist, the only difference would be that the number of smoking establishments would reflect the number of smokers in this country (a minority).

Bar business is predicated on vice.

I believe malls and office buildings should have smoking areas, as most used to until recently. Malls are massive, well ventilated enclosures with high ceilings. In such an environment, the idea that secondhand smoke is somehow going to kill people is, quite simply, reeruned. With office buildings, lounges were generally extremely well ventilated. I actually preferred it when smokers smoked in the lounge as opposed to loitering outside every single office door.

When it comes to stadiums, in an outdoor stadium, a smoker should simply be allowed to smoke. IT'S OUTSIDE. THE END. Just blow the damned smoke up in the air and not at the people in front of you. Indoor stadiums - again, huge, well ventilated buildings that should have designated smoking areas.

I don't know how attendance has been affected. I would say the difference between malls and bars/restaurants is that smoking tends to be a leisure activity, more associated with bars especially.

Also, keep in mind - it may be 70 and pleasant during the winter in LA, but in Chicago, it's cold and crappy. Not everyplace has wonderful weather year-round. Stepping outside to ten degree weather sucks, especially in a place where nobody minds smoking (yes, there are places like that) but have the rule shoved down their throats by the police state.

And finally, you were not the person I was referring to when I bowed out of the other non-smoking thread - it was Jim. He is so utterly unreasonable and arrogant on the subject, there is simply no point in discussing it. Add DENise to the mix on top of it, and sorry, but I don't do smug annoying extremists.

Kind of like the restaurant owner/chef whose chooses to offer meat/shellfish/eggs on the menu. You are assuming the risk if you choose those items and that risk is now laid out on every menu in plain english that consumption of said item can be harmful to your health.
If you walk into an establishment that offers smoking, you assume the risk of second hand smoke. The owner's responsibility should be to identify his establishment as smoking/non-smoking.