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Originally Posted by TN_Chief
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.
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He absolutely could have done so. I have been in many places with signs stating that they reserve the right to refuse service to anyone. This would include a smoker.
For that matter, maybe non-smoking places could have been set up as membership clubs. If it is good enough for smokers to set up something like this, why not for the non-smokers?
I don't know. I thought I grew in the land of the free, not the home of the law ridden.