As for clean air, you mean, cleaner air, the particles in your so called clean air still contain the contaminants of your multitude of trains, planes and automobiles (no matter how lower their emissions – sheer numbers and old vehicles eat into those), industrial plant smoke, landfill castoff, and a number of industrial and residential pollutants add to your cancer risks daily. Let’s make the clean-up hit home.

THERE ARE INHERENT NO SMOKER’S RIGHTS!!!

The smoking ban is about controlling other people and holding them to your own personal standards. The moral majority would love to force prayer back into our schools; the obnoxious liberal would love to force smoking out of existence. It’s the same human need to control other people’s behavior to a self-identified standard and it’s immoral no matter what side you’re on.

To those who say that “lives are at stake”, well then why not outlaw high fat food? There’s a clear link between eating foods that are high in fat and heart disease. And heart disease is the nation’s largest killer so how about you step down off of the “Ban smoking” soapbox and stand up on the “ban fat people” soapbox. Unless, of course, it’s not really about the aggregate number of lives you can save (but if that’s the case, why are you using lives as an argument?)

I don’t want my behavior controlled by the government. If I want to smoke (I don’t, but if I decide I want to) I should be able to smoke. If I want a Big Mac, so be it. If you tell me that my smoke or Big Mac is harming you then you need to get yourself away from me. Instead, people try to outlaw behavior that aggravates them. “My rights are more important than yours!” goes the chorus.

Lives are always at stake but, oddly enough, if you elongated the life of a smoker he’d still die. Maybe of heart disease! The truth is that humans die. It’s our thing. How about living your own life and letting those around you live theirs; in relative peace and without constant admonishment about how their habits are harming them. The same can be said of almost any vice, and we all have our vices, so unless you’d like to be berated, publically, about yours maybe you shouldn’t berate other people about their vice of choice.

Government is not always the answer, folks. Business people who are afraid of being the first one on the block to go smoke-free have no guts. If you believe it is the best thing for your customers and staff, then do it. Grow a pair and stop relying on government to help you out.

Wonderful. Absolutely wonderful.

So much for the big tent, eh? Lots of the Dems just attack whoever or whatever they don’t agree with. Grow up people.

I won’t attack them for wanting more government regulation and for supporting a poorly worded and over-reaching bill – but man. After reading all the posts I want to!

badrose called me this evening and directed me here. I’m glad I came.

Vivian, I’ve always known you are a straight up person. Excessive regulation is just that, excessive. Hold your ground on this one. And the seat belt thing as well.

I’ve almost always agreed with you. At least on most fiscal issues as well as many social issues. I agree with Squeaky more often, but that’s to be expected, I suppose. I’m somewhat unrefined that way.

I have yet to find common ground with Eileen, and from her attitude during the previous blog conference I’m well aware of her petulant personality, so her comments do not surprise me.

phriendlyjaime, there’s hope for you yet girl. We finally find a strong belief that we share, now dump that toady guy and let a real man show what life is all about….(That last phrase was satire, for those of you who are not predisposed to understand it.)

afae = safe

a) An idiot
b) A bad parent
c) too stupid to know what your children are doing
d) too stupid to know what to do that is sfae
e) all of the above

I took a crap today and there was no one there to tell me to wipe… WHERE IS THE GOVERNMENT?!?!?

Sound dumb? Yes you do. Yes you do.

Although I will say this. I am FOR mandantory seat belts for kids, seats for infants. They rely on us to make decisions for them until they are old enough to do it themselves.

I am “spent” on my long dissertations today but… I HATE SEATBELT LAWS.

Thankfully, their enforcement is discretionary…

Certainly not some loony liberal like the current Surgeon General.

The screaming baby here is you, PJ. And since you make about as much sense as one (the only consistent theme to your (varied and contradictory) arguments has been me! me! me!), I’m getting off this merry-go-round.

No, it’s not only my right, it’s the fact that this second hand smoke kills rhetoric isn’t as true as they all scream that it is. But, once again, those people are the loudest, and the loudest baby in the nursery gets the most attention, so….

woot woot

Go libertarians go

Vivian, your thoughts on seat belts?

I dislike the seatbelt laws for the very same reason that I dislike the proposed smoking ban: government stepping into the area of personal choice. Before there was a law requiring the wearing of seat belts, I wore mine all the time. Heck, my insurance company gave me a discount for saying that I would Truthfully, I did it because I was quite aware of the statistics on injuries when not wearing one. Since the wearing of a seat belt became mandatory, I resent putting it on.

I don’t need the government to save me from myself.

That line and thinking smacks a bit of “Back of the Bus”… anyone else?

Bottom line is this-the anti-smoking crusade is NOT trying to work together with smokers or property owners. Instead of making smoking illegal in restaurants, they can enforce stricter set-ups and ventilation systems. They can make places smoke free during the am-early pm hours and let people smoke at night, like the typical bar setting. They can decide on their own whether or not they have a smoking section at all. But no. Instead, non-smokers win and smokers should shut up and get the hell outisde where they belong.

You have your one sided view, I have a list of feasible compromises. So be it.

Putting aside the question of individual rights, there are any number of things that are both harmful and helpful, to which reasonable regulation should be applied. Factory emissions, vehicle engineering, alcohol consumption, etc. There are almost no absolute bans on *anything.* Thoughtful people try to weigh the harms against the benefits of a given activity, and adopt the least restrictive regulation that can address the heaviest of the harms. And yes, this is often done in a wash of money.

You, on the other hand, seem to be engaged in a not-all-that-convincing game of all or nothing.

Basically, the way I see it, they want to grow it, sell it, tax it, fine people for it, spend time and $$ on legislation about it, and as we can see from California-outlaw it everywhere, including outside and in private homes. So, we’re basically on the way there anyway, right? Ban it outright, and lose the billions of $$ the industry makes every year.

Again, it’ll never happen. Instead, they will appease the loudest, and at this point in time, the loudest are the anti-smoking radicals.

Would you clarify for me please how you feel that smoking in a restaurant is a right while simultaneously supporting making tobacco outright illegal? I think that’s why MB is confused, and I know it’s why you’re confusing the heck out of me. You don’t support any ban on smoking in public but you would criminalize it in a private home?

In my opinion, that’s an even nastier slippery slope you’re proposing, possibly leading to outlawing other things which some may deem harmful and offensive, like alcohol. And Lord knows THAT little experiment didn’t work out….

I suppose it is rude to point out how sloppy someone’s argument is, but isn’t that sorta what we’re here for? To distill the reasons for/against an exercise of gov’t power? You’re bouncing around like a BB in an airplane hanger looking for arguments to support your preference to be able to blow smoke wherever you feel like it.

~

Not that it particularly matters, but I’m not pro-smoking ban (but am admittedly very sympathetic to the motivations behind it). What gets me involved in these conversations is the (frequent, not absolute) pretense of concern for rights by the anti-ban crowd. Usually lost in their paeans to individual rights are the rights of any individual other than themselves.

I hate to do this, and I apologize in advance, but we are discussing this over at WOS as well. I am going to repost a comment with a few edits.

What about restaurants that have already spent thousands upon thousands of dollars to equip their restaurant with good ventilation systems? They should just be made to bite the cost? Well, I have news for you; that certainly isn’t aiding in the protection of someone’s job, now is it? Plus, every server I have ever asked has said they would rather work around smoke than lose their job bc the restaurnat loses $$ bc of an anti-smoking protest. Additionally, if you are going to use that argument, please explain to me how New Jersey justitifes the FACT that smoking is not allowed in restaurants to “protect” employees, but it IS allowed in casinos. What, casino employees don’t count? I find it hard to believe that anyone would think that a black jack dealer could find a job easier than a server. Bit of a difference in resumes and amount of places to choose from. Well, the reason is clear-the casinos would lose a lot of $$, and they lobbied the New Jersey govt. to allow them to have smoking indoors.

And ignoring the issue? What, exactly, is the issue? Your preferences and your rights only?

~

And you should buy me a drink for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that you’ll see DC is a city full of smokers who have somehow been shockingly able to continue enjoying their nights out without lighting up for a couple of hours.

I think the government should frankly be more concerned about obesity and applaud any and all efforts to reduce it–although of course one cannot outlaw obesity, since you correctly point out that some have a genetic predispostion towards it, I’m a huge fan of anything that encourages people towards running more.

I actually don’t care one way or the other about a smoking ban, and if anything I’m against it. I’m against it because a girl can’t walk up to me in a bar anymore and ask if she can bum a cigarette or if I have a light. And I’m always opposed to anything the government might do to increase the difficulty of small talk with attractive members of the opposite sex in inebbriated circumstances.

Or are you talking about the fact that you don’t like to sit next to fat people on airplanes? Because you’re right, I really don’t have an answer for that.

~

And you are welcome to buy me a drink any time. We can meet in Arl, er . . how about DC?

Obesity, smoking, drinking, have genes tht make a person more likely to become (fill in the blank). But let’s have a look at the medical argument… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coronary_heart_disease

Notice that SMOKING is a huge risk factor.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cardiovascular_disease

Again smoking…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ischaemic_heart_disease

“Do not smoke”

I know in those links it talks about obesity…but you act as if smoking has NOTHING to do with heart disease when in fact it does.

Smoking is not going to be illegal but it will be in places where they will not affect others…indoor facilities.

I am disappointed; I just rec’d a call back from Webb’s office in Richmond, and they do not know if Jim Webb will take a position on this. That’s strange, since Senator Warner already did (he supports the ban).

You simply cannot use this health of the non smoker argument bc anyone who has done research on this knows that those polls, data, even straight up SCIENCE is skewed by both sides of the argument in order to make their point. Is there too much $$ in politics and tobacco? HELL YES. That’s why it would be better to make it illegal across the board than to ban it so others don’t have to be annoyed. If you can prove to me that ONLY second hand smoke from smokers caused the death/illness of the people you claim make the health case, then fine. BUT. YOU. CAN’T. No one can, or this would have been done everywhere, a long time ago. There is no way to test for JUST the second hand smoke. Period. This isn’t hard to understand, but the anti-smoking crusade makes it so to confuse/dilute the issue.

When it was Jim Webb’s turn to answer, he said something along the lines of “I use chewing tobacco because I like it.”

My guess is he’s anti-ban, but it’s largely irrelevant, as he doesn’t legislate at the state level and the 10th amendment is going to protect the GA and Gov. Kaine’s right as state lawmakers to enact whatever law regarding smoking that they see fit–provided it doesn’t interfere with individual constitutional rights and isn’t expressly prohibited by the Constitution as either a reserved legislative power of the Federal government or a power prohibited to the states–kind of like seat-belt laws, which were adopted because they save lives and because accidents which might otherwise be prevented by seat belts can burden emergency rooms and often run up medical expenses that go un-reimbursed and are passed on either to other consumers or to the state–and thus to the tax-payer.

Vivian, your thoughts on seat belts?

Please explain to me why it is fair that someone who is paying a retaurant bill JUST LIKE THE NON SMOKER IS should have to get up[.]

It’s because the choice of the non-smoker to not smoke doesn’t impact you, Jaime. When you choose to smoke, it impacts the people around you negatively. You may not care, but most of them do.