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You're not forced to live like a monk. You can go to one of the many businesses that don't allow smoking or you can go to a public space.
In fact, forcing people to go outside is the antithesis of what you're saying. The people breathing secondhand smoke in a private establishment do so of their own volition as they have no right to expect otherwise. The people breathing secondhand smoke out on the street, on the other hand, have a fundamental right to be on a public street.
Limiting choices people have is the same as forcing them to make one of a certain set of choices, thus forcing their behavior.
Smoking effects people just as much. You are negatively effecting the air, which we all have to breathe.
But why do you have to be there smoking. Why am I force to live like a monk? You can still smoke. Go outside for a minute, come back in.
Why don't you go outside?
Because even after you are done smoking, the air is still polluted. My only choice is to leave. If you leave for a minute to smoke, you come back in.
And whites in the 50s PREVENTED black people from voting inside and forced people to NOT do something.
Statist governments forcing people to not do something is no better than governments forcing people to do something.
If you can articulate the difference between forcing people to do something and forcing people to NOT do something, I'd love to hear it.
They're one and the same.
there were no bars that voluntarily banned smoking around here before the public smoking ban. you're not getting this, dan--it just didn't happen--the choice did not exist. additionally, you were not generally allowed to bring your own to and drink in public spaces (although i often did anyway... but the need for secrecy limits your choices).
The outside has a very good air circulation system. Buildings don't.
I am for putting the onus on the ones doing the harm. They want the benefit of smoking.
You don't have to breathe the air inside if you don't want to. You made the choice to go into Joe's private establishment.
Now, Joe's Bar should be culpable if the ventilation isn't designed right and the smoke-filled air isn't leaving the joint from a place where it will disburse properly where people aren't breathing or if the air is filtering into Mindy's Flower Shop.
Because even after you are done smoking, the air is still polluted. My only choice is to leave.
Correct, that is your choice. You can leave. Your only complaint should be if Joe's Bar, forces you to wait in the smoky air while you pay your tab.
NO, YOU DON'T HAVE TO BREATHE THE AIR IN A BAR. Sheesh. Sorry to shout, but why can't people seem to grasp this basic point? Before this ban saved all of our lives, were bar owners rounding people up off the street and forcing them into the smoke-filled bar?
Why is it your god given right to be content while 50 people must be inconvienced for you to be happy? Why does the world have to change just so you can go into a bar and not be annoyed by smoke? Going to a bar is your only option? You can't do anything else? You have to remove my options just so you can be happy? Again why can't I open a cigarette bar? Why am I not allowed that option?
I am all for putting the onus on the ones doing the harm only if the harmed did not freely consent to the risk of harm. You can only be harmed by the loss of rights and you have no right to be in Joe's Bar.
Only 20% of adults smoke today.
it's not. fortunately other people agree with me that it would be nice to have clean air when they went out for a drink. i say it's worked out quite nicely.
So then the answer then is to get rid of it entirely? Sounds to me like what should have happened is other laws should have changed to accommodate peoples needs and desires.
Frankly, I don't see why either group has a superior moral claim to bars/restaurants. It's just as ridiculous to force non-smokers to NOT go to bars as it is to FORCE smokers to step outside for a smoke. Either way, you're infringing on someone's freedoms.
I did not consent. I just wanted a drink.
Again, there were no smoke free bars before the ban. I had no choice. Smokers today can still go to the bar. The can still smoke, they just have to step outside to do so, then come back in.
Yes and all 20% of them go to bars a lot more frequently then Joe Abstain.
*shrug* like i said, it's worked out nicely. my friends that smoke don't mind going outside. additionally, i have a bunch of friends that found it much easier to quit since the ban. really, it's been a huge success in teh boston area.
Well then you better pray that these other people never try to infringe upon something you do enjoy because it won't work out so nicely.
Smoking only affects people close to you, whereas music can carry a long distance and affects many people. If you're arguing that trace smoke elements in the air have negative health benefits, that you need to also argue for banning cars. Or, move to a non-industrialized country. Like Rwanda.
exactly!
not at all. the non-smoking bar might lose business to the smoking bar next door, but maybe bars would be more successful and the owners and employees more healthy and happy if neither one allowed smoking.
Plurality != right
Lots of people also agreed that black people could be bought and sold and currently agree that the bible is a history book.
Then, it's too bad for the non-smoking place, just like it would be too bad for the medical office that banned ill people and only allowed people in there for "safe" things like broken legs and wounds.
I'll bet a pitcher of absinthe at Joe's that it will turn out that information cannot be transferred that way and special relativity holds just fine.
Except the majority of smokers polled want to quit. That is why the tobacco companies can never get a grassroots movement going. Most smokers don't want to smoke. Most are addicted, got addicted at a young age and now are stuck
I will give you smoking bars if you give me extremely tough penalties on getting minors to smoke. License tobacco shops. $1000 fine for selling to minors first time ($10,000 to the tobacco company). $5000 2nd time. Lose your license the 3rd. Aggressive undercover policing (Hire teens to be carded)
Once people make it to 18, they rarely start smoking.
fortunately, that's not how it works. boy, i'm glad i don't live in a libertarian utopia!
I did not consent. I just wanted a drink.
You consented by entering. There are many non-smoking places where you could choose to purchase alcohol and many non-smoking places where you could choose to consume your alcohol. Unless bars have a monopolistic hold on the purchase of alcohol, you weren't improperly forced to enter a smoky bar to drink any more than a woman improperly forces you to be nice to her before sex.
fortunately, that's not how it works. boy, i'm glad i don't live in a libertarian utopia!
Fascism uber alles.
Yes I could go home alone and drink. Thanks.
It is a public place. A public place that without the ban would have to be a smoking place due to competition (with rare exceptions)
Actually, that's fine with me. When it comes down to it, minors are not fully in possession of free choice.
A bar is NOT A PUBLIC PLACE, it is a business and private property. A park is a public place. Joe's is very, very different from a park.
There's practically no reason for a private establishment to be a public place.
But I want to go to the bar to meet new more exciting friends.
Now, Joes doesn't like black people. What then?
Since pot is illegal, you aren't going to find them at the bar.
Absolutely repugnant, but allowable in a perfect society (i.e., not ours). If non-smokers had previously had their civil rights taken away and treated as property for hundreds of years, then the smoking ban would be fine - the issues of institutional racism in part stemming from previous unethical damage muddies the water significantly for me. There's no such ethical dilemma with a smoking ban.
Perhaps No Daks were't as sophistimacated as Manhattanites, but I don't see why it couldn't have worked there.
I think Swoboda's point that it was difficult to find non-smoking bars prior to the ban is well taken, and it shouldn't be that easily dismissed. Even with a large majority of adults being non-smokers, in many places up until recently it was nearly impossible to find a restaurant or bar where you didn't have to breathe in secondhand smoke. (Not that that particularly bothered me, but that's just me.)
But OTOH you now have a situation where the admitted minority of smokers has to go out in the heat, cold or rain to light up, even if a smoking allowed bar (or many of them) could easily attract enough smokers to keep itself going, without exposing a single non-smoker to their smoke, and leaving the non-smoker with plenty of viable alternatives, unlike in the pre-ban days. I don't see the basic justice in this, either. Why is it so hard to compromise?
I think we're talking "should" and not "is."
Frankly, I don't see why either group has a superior moral claim to bars/restaurants.
Sigh. Why do people keep bringing up this strawman? It totally misses the issue. You identified two groups -- smokers and non-smokers -- and neither group is relevant. The relevant group is the business owner. The business owner is the only group with a "superior moral claim to bars/restaurants."
So if you're really worried about the big bad government coming in and telling these business owners what they can and can't do, well, that ship sailed a long, long time ago.
A lot of freedoms set sail a long time ago - that doesn't mean we can't want them or fight for them. The state's not supposed to exist without the permission of the governed, not the other way around.
Governments regulate commerce. Commercial enterprises are public by their very nature. We're not talking about banning smoking in one's own home.
Untrue. Some airlines went non-smoking before others. I believe America West was among the first, and they hit heavy on that point in their adverts. Others banned it on domestic flights, but allowed it on international.
But the ban on airlines makes a lot more sense than in bars and restaurants. The air in pressurized cabins is recirculated, little is vented to the outside, only enough to carry away exhalesd CO2 and replace with O2. Even with the smoking ban, the air quality on airliners is pretty poor, and in the days of smoking, could be a very unhealthy work environment.
So if you're really worried about the big bad government coming in and telling these business owners what they can and can't do, well, that ship sailed a long, long time ago.
I think most of the posters on this thread are quite aware that they don't live in an libertarian utopia/dystopia. Especially me :-)
The governed also voted people into office who took away the rights of black people for centuries.
There are rights that a government should not be allowed to take away no matter how the governed vote and the right to run your life in a way that does not cause direct harm to non-consenting adults is one of them.
Oh goody another special interest group that has no interest in a functioning society only in there little pet cause.
I guess to me I feel I shouldn't have to form a special interest group to hold on to my rights. I would like to believe that people would not feel the need to remove other peoples rights.
Have these bans been tested in the courts? Have they been found constitutional? If so, then by definition, they are allowed.
Really? Slavery is constitutional?
It was, for 70 odd years. There are many examples of the courts upholding slavery, the Dred Scott case being the first that comes to mind. The Amistad? Or was that something else?
EDIT - Embarassing typo.
While it might have been better had I written Democrats rather than liberals, very few liberals think the war on drugs is terrible. They may not have the exact same motives as Republicans -- they may want to fight it out of a sense of the harms of drugs rather than the immorality of drugs -- and they may want to fight it differently -- they prefer to lock people up in "treatment" instead of penitentiaries, but they are just as gung ho about fighting it. They may quibble about alleged racial sentencing disparities; they may claim they want to focus more on evil pushers rather than users. (Although conservatives often claim the same.) But they're just as gung ho about fighting it. How many liberals are in favor of legalization of drugs? Marijuana, maybe -- except even there, the vast majority of liberals flinch at the thought; the most they'll concede is that it ought to be decriminalized, not legalized.
Look at this very thread. Do you think everyone disagreeing with me about legalization is a conservative? Do you think those who want to attack smoking are conservatives? No, it's liberals who want to add tobacco to the war on drugs. Throughout American history, it has been liberals, not conservatives, who have wanted to add alcohol to the war on drugs.
I am not saying that liberals are necessarily as eager to erode the fourth amendment to fight the war; indeed, they often pay lip service to the opposite idea. But the two go hand-in-hand. Saying you want to fight the war on drugs without undercutting the fourth amendment is like saying you support surgery but you don't want to cut people open.
There are rights that a government should not be allowed to take away no matter how the governed vote and the right to run your life in a way that does not cause direct harm to non-consenting adults is one of them.
ROTFLMAO. Segregation is comparable to smoking bans? The right to smoke in a bar is an inalienable right?
Yes, one everyone's forgotten about, with the Commerce Clause becoming the "Gumint can Do any Damn Thing It Wants!" clause and the Supreme Court essentially giving itself their power.
I would think the right to choose how I live and go about life is an inalienable right, don't you?
The right to use one's own property for their own reasons, without causing direct harm to another.
Sorry, but you voluntarily surrender certain "rights" when you apply for a business license.
No, you're being forced at gunpoint by the government to surrender your rights.
Actually, yes. They are both the same right, the right to live as you choose so long as it does not directly cause harm to another non-consenting adult.
Evidence?
How many liberals are in favor of legalization of drugs?
A fair number. Certainly liberals are far, far closer to your position than conservatives.
Look at this very thread. Do you think everyone disagreeing with me about legalization is a conservative?
Pretty much.
Again, you are causing harm to another person.
And this was always the case? Our founding fathers created this country so the government could control enterprise and people?
For about the 70 millionth time this isn't about what the government can do but what they shouldn't be allowed to do.
this like trying to have a debate about the drinking age and all you keep saying is that the drinking age is 21. Yes we know the drinking age is 21 but we are saying it should be lower. Continuing to point out that the drinking age is 21 doesn't disprove the opposing argument.
No, I'm causing harm to a consenting person.
The right to choose how to live your life doesn't include the right to do whatever you want whereever you want.
I doubt that excluding minorities would be a sound business practice, but yes, business should have the right to refuse service for any reason. If you didnt like the local KKK burger, you also have every right not to go there. If enough people refuse to shop there, the business will close, and the business that serve everyone will continue existing.
No you are causing harm to yourself. If I operate a wood-chipper and you decide to stick your hand in it did I cause harm to you? If I am operating a semi and you decide to jump in front of it did I cause harm to you? Smoke isn't some invisible beast that you cannot see or smell. you open a door you see smoke, at that moment you have a choice. you can say hey that stuff is toxic and leave or you can say screw it and walk in. you getting sick is your own fault.
Yet oddly enough that is pretty much the line you anti-smokers are taking.
No, but you should have the right to do whatever you want whereever you want as long as it doesn't cause unwanted harm to anyone else.
Not entirely true. Prohibition in the WWI-1930s era was a bipartisan issue that was supported by both progressives and conservatives.
I don't believe "corporations" qua corporations have rights. I believe individuals have rights. Corporations as bunches of individuals have rights. Communities as bunches of individuals do, also. That's not what you mean, though. What you mean is a special right, as a group, to do something the individuals can't do. To illustrate the difference: you certainly wouldn't accept that I personally have the right to tell you what to eat. You wouldn't accept that your next door neighbor personally has the right to tell you what to eat. You wouldn't accept that the guy across the street has the right to tell you what to eat. But you think that if all three of us get together and call ourselves a "community," then we have the right to tell you what to eat. I say that the three of us together have the same rights that the three of us independently have -- and that doesn't include the right to tell you what to eat.
Yeargh:No. A democratically elected government is not part of the free market. (What is people's fascination with democracy? Democracy defines a method for choosing the government. That's all it is. It's not synonymous with freedom.) Government interference in the market, whether the government is popularly chosen or hereditary, is not a free market. Depending on the level of interference, it may be more or less free, but it isn't truly free.
The legal system needed for a free market is simply one that enforces agreements between consenting people. If contracts aren't enforceable, then a market can't exist. But note that this is not interference in the market; this is giving effect to what happens in the market.
I think it is unreasonable, but that hasn't been my primary point here. My main point here is just to convince people that "reasonable" limitations on freedom <u>are still limitations on freedom</u>. Because everyone still pays lip service to the notion of individual liberty, people like Google Boy have to keep trying to deny this obvious point; he thinks that if a given restriction is a good idea, then it isn't really a restriction at all.
Really? I thought temperance was a religious (conservative) movement.
I think liberals are a little better regarding decriminalization, but no serious politician in any party is ending the war on drugs.
Except the government tries very hard to get private club to do what the government wants them to do. For instance it is virtually impossible if not downright impossible to form a whites only club and serve alcohol in that club. You can even try to give that alcohol away for free and you still probably won't be able to do it. If money is changing hands somewhere on that road and your club is something more then 5 guys meeting at Bob's house on Thursday for poker then the government wants control over how you operate.
I guess I'm confused by the arguments flying around. Are you (and others) arguing that secondhand smoke isn't dangerous, or that the danger is irrelevant because nonsmokers have the option to go to somewhere else?
Actually, we are. Tonight, we are 5 white guys, a Jew, and an Indian (as in "from India") playing at George's house tonight.
Absolutely right, and it's one of the things that frustrates me to no end. A policy that costs a ton of money, and over decades has achieved what can most charitably described as debatable results, with obvious extensive collateral damage ... and yet questioning the policy is political poison, beyond the realm of serious questioning by serious candidates for any high-profile office.
Amazing.
You don't suck on a car's exhaust pipe everyday do you? Why because you understand it is a dangerous thing to do so you don't do it. But that doesn't mean we ban cars now is it. Alcohol is a dangerous substance, yet oddly enough people are fighting for the right to have a smoke free enviroment so they can drink their toxin of choice without having to breath another toxin. Truly odd.
"The free market" is just an abstract concept. Its boundaries aren't clearly defined. Any society that has a modern free market economy (and I assume you're not talking about pure anarchy), is going to have a government and a legal system that establish many of the parameters of that market. As such, the government is a part of that market, and the boundary between what is the market and what is interference with that market is vague.
I think the dangers of secondhand smoke have been wildly overblown, but that hasn't been my main point here. I've argued mainly that the business owner should have the freedom to make the decision. Following from that is the fact that anyone (smokers or nonsmokers) has the choice of entering the business owner's establishment or not, depending on whether they like the rules the business owner has set.
In other words, I'm for preserving the freedoms of each party: the bar owner the freedom to set his own rules, and the smokers/nonsmokers the freedom to choose whether to enter his establishment.
For one thing, they have an occupier's duty of care, which can be defined by statute if the government so chooses. Keeping the air in the bar reasonably free of carcinogens seems as if it could well fall within that duty of care.
Yet oddly they don't have to keep their beverages free of carcinogens? Their food?
Oh wait we are trying to prevent that too.
An obvious example is alcohol; too much kills you right away, and too much spread out over a long time destroys your liver. But a moderate amount does neither; indeed, there's some evidence that in certain forms (e.g., red wine) it's actually good for your health. Thus, we can't rely on mere intuition to decide that eliminating smoking in bars will reduce cancer incidence (or heart disease, or whatever).
The war on drugs is a faith-based initiative.
Results are unimportant. Evidence is unimportant. Cost is unimportant.
All that matters is punishing wrongdoers.
The Republicans will some day decriminalize pot. End the W.O.D., tax the #### out of it, balance the budget, and cut taxes on the really rich.
Ok, but then you can't claim that your behavior isn't harming anyone else. The issue is then just a balancing of rights -- the bar owner's right to do what he or she wants with his or her bar, the smokers' right to smoke at the bar, and the non-smokers' right to go to a public place and not be exposed to harmful smoke. You argue that the balance favors the first two. I think the balance favors the non-smokers.
Here's my bottom line: I sympathize with the argument favoring the first two groups -- it's certainly a reasonable position. But I take issue with the notion that fundamental, inalienable rights are being infringed by the ban, and no rights would be harmed by the lack of a ban. Our society decided long ago that, if you open a business, you have to serve the public. You can't discriminate and you have to obey certain laws. Therefore, I have a right to go to public bars and restaurants, and I don't want to be exposed to harmful substances while I'm there. That's the dilemma. It isn't fascism vs. liberty. It's a balance of competing interests and rights.
It's not a public place. That is the distinction.
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