According to this article in the Virginian-Pilot, Governor Tim Kaine would like to ban smoking in all restaurants in Virginia.
“I am actively looking at that,” he said. “I don’t know that there are any cons.”
Kaine said health care groups have asked him to add a statewide restaurant ban to legislation passed last month that merely requires restaurants to post signs if they allow smoking. The governor said he is gauging support among legislators for the idea before he proposes an amendment. He said he won’t make a push for a statewide ban unless lawmakers signal support for the idea.
I, for one, hope that there is little legislative support for the idea. Let the market dictate whether restaurants allow smoking or not.
VIVIAN J. PAIGE | All Politics is Local 
There is a paradox in the arguments of Vivian, Tom, and anyone else who oppose smoking bans on grounds of government nannyism/the market should decide. It’s about cherry picking where you apply your laissez-faire attitude. I’ll sum it up in one question below.
Secondhand smoking is an established public health threat, spelled out by President Bush’s own surgeon general, who says, “There is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke.”
If you don’t think the government should act on this public health threat, do you also support the repeal of government regulation of food safety and the drinking age in bars & restaurants, and if not, why are some public health threats OK to regulate but not others?
Not exactly a knock down argument, Miles. Without answering for Vivian or Tom, the reason *I’d* say that some are okay to regulate, and not others, is based on the severity of the public health threat *as well as* the cost of addressing that threat.
“Cost” is often quite difficult to define. How does one price freedom? Generally, I think the way we resolve such issues is by discussing and reaching what too often these days becomes an awkward consensus. A society with a diversity of opinions does not come without its own price.
My own personal measure of success for a law is whether the law protects people’s rights more than it takes people’s rights away. As yet, I have determined no way to quantify this measure. Nonetheless, I will concede cost (in dollars) is important. Good nannies do not come cheap.
That the folks who were polled obviously didn’t think before they responded. Smoking making someone unelectable seems quite a reach to me. How about doing drugs? How about drinking? How in the heck could smoking be above those?
Repeal of regulation for food safety is not in the same category as smoking. I would support the repeal of a legal drinking age. MB has hit it: severity of the threat (bad food would kill us all) and the cost.
Smoke-free restaurants and bars have their place. People who smoke or don’t smoke can choose whether to go there. People can choose whether or not to work there. If no one goes to restaurants and bars where smoking is allowed, if no one is willing to work in a restaurant or bar where smoking is allowed, there will be no smoking restaurants or bars.
We don’t need a law to say no smoking allowed. You know, there is no smoking allowed in the outdoor ballpark. (But plenty of drunk folks.) How much sense does that make?
That claim always boggles my mind. How in the heck do they know what an individual’s life expectancy is? Not to mention the fact that two people would have to live identical lives (impossible) in order for the comparisons to be valid. Life expectancy, like anything else, is a numbers game made up of many different variables.
My partner’s grandfather smoked his whole life and got run over by a truck when he was 96, while going fishing. So he was supposed to have lived for another 14 years? Or maybe it was more than that since smoking wasn’t the cause of death.
The pendulum on smoking has swung, in my opinion, much too far.
I love how smoking ban opponents will wax philosophical all day about how asking smokers to step out to the sidewalk for a minute to light up impinge on the rights and liberty and freedom of smokers … but when it comes to nonsmokers, the response is, “If they don’t like it, they can quit their jobs and stay home.” I guess the personal rights crusade doesn’t cover everyone.
No, it definitely doesn’t.
I also think that the smoker’s position is often a product of (no) experience. That is, until they stop smoking, they have very little idea how much the action of a single person lighting up can impact an entire area, nevermind an enclosed room. I have quite a few former smoker friends who all experienced “holy crap that stinks!” moments a few months after they’d quit. And this doesn’t even begin to touch on the matter of how that smoke sticks with you until the next shower and dry cleaning . . .
Rights often involve the ability to make a free choice. When someone pays for private building, such as an eating establishment, that buyer has purchased property rights. It seems to me it should up to the owner to decide whether the building is smoking or nonsmoking. If you do not want to go into the building, you do not have to. That is your choice.
Tom, again you’re being selective about your application of “property rights”. Do you also oppose building and fire codes? Aren’t those impediments on property rights?
Look, if you don’t like smoking bans, fine. The one thing we all agree on is that the First Amendment is an iron-clad, unimpeachable protection on our rights to express whatever opinions we want, be they tree-hugging or libertarian.
But if you’re going to pledge allegiance to privacy or property rights, you sound awfully hypocritical by claiming selective application — privacy rights that protect a smoker’s need to light up but not my need to breathe clean air, and property rights that prevent the government from issuing smoking bans but not from issuing health and safety codes.
That’s all I’m saying. And with that, let’s agree to disagree 🙂