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Originally Posted by Hydrae
why wasn't there a wave of non-smoking establishments popping up around the country, regardless of legislation? Are our free economists in this country that out of touch that every last one of them missed this chance to get an advantage on their competition by banning smoking in their businesses?
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For the same reason that legislation is needed to create non-smoking places: because if someone had created a non-smoking restaurant (in the absence of laws designating it as non-smoking) then a smoker could have gone in and smoked there because it's a public place and there wasn't/isn't any legislation protecting it as a non-smoking area. An individual that operates a public place can't unilaterally ban (or unban) anything.
Get this through your thick heads...private ownership means
nothing when the establishment is a public place. That cuts both ways. An owner that wanted a smoke-free establishment (pre-legislation) wouldn't have had a legal leg to stand on if he/she had tried to enforce the non-smoking nature of the place and would have been wide open to a lawsuit from a smoker that was denied service or ejected. The only answer in either case is to be a private club.