Now All Restaurants Are Taco Bell

More on the Demolition Man-ification of America, as Marc Ambinder picks up burgeoning support among Democratic presidential candidates for the sort of comprehensive bans on indoor smoking that we have in California, DC, New York, and many other blue areas.

Speaking personally, the idea of such a ban seemed like a terrible idea when I was a smoker. Then, in late 2006 with the 2 January 2007 implementation date (to let people finish off their New Year's Eve partying) looming, I decided I should take advantage of the legal switch to quit smoking. Now that I've been smoke-free for nearly ten months, I naturally wish to persecute smokers as vigorously possible with every legal tool available.

Comments

More Atlantic links, please.

Posted by Gabriel | September 27, 2007 12:32 PM

I have no desire to persecute smokers. I just want to breath.

Posted by Misplaced Patriot | September 27, 2007 12:36 PM

If only Matt were joking. Well, he probably is, but if only there weren't millions of people who honestly think that way.

Posted by too many steves | September 27, 2007 12:37 PM

I just found out last year that you were a smoker, and finally got that image of you into my head, and now you go and switch things again. What's next, you going to go vegan?

Posted by SP | September 27, 2007 12:45 PM

Are there really still people out there making the argument that smoking bans are about persecuting and nannying smokers? Anyone who doesn't see that these bans are about the health and rights of non-smokers is really too self-important to believe.

Posted by Gabriel | September 27, 2007 12:48 PM

Well, I was still smoking when the NYC ban went into effect, and I always liked being able to see and breathe indoors enough that going out in the snow or the sticky heat for a smoke seemed like a small price to pay. Every smoker should try visiting a city or state with a public smoking ban for a couple weeks. It really is an incredible improvement on quality of life.

Posted by tps12 | September 27, 2007 12:57 PM

"Anyone who doesn't see that these bans are about the health and rights of non-smokers is really too self-important to believe."

A ban on outdoor smoking, such as we have in Del Mar, (North of San Diego), is not about the health of non-smokers.

Posted by JordanT | September 27, 2007 1:01 PM

Man, I'm just not getting what you're saying this morning. Are you pro-Taco Bell or anti-Taco Bell? Cause really, they've made remarkable strides over the past few years from advancing the simple taco to the chalupa and the largely unheralded discovery of the steak grilled stuffed burrito...

Posted by Adi Nadimpalli | September 27, 2007 1:02 PM

When I was reading your college blog, I remember asking one of your classmates if she knew you, and she said yes, she recalled you from some freshman meeting, smoking. I am genuinely pleased that you have quit.

Posted by David Margolies | September 27, 2007 1:10 PM

I was a smoker when the NYC ban went into effect, too. The ban made it much easier to quit. And my experience seems to be typical -- NYC smoking rates have dropped by almost a quarter in the past 5 years. (Admittedly the cigarette tax increase was a big part of this too.) So yeah, it's about nannying (i.e. improving the health of) smokers. So what? -- it works.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 27, 2007 1:13 PM

A ban on outdoor smoking, such as we have in Del Mar, (North of San Diego), is not about the health of non-smokers.

That is true, but that's not what Gabriel was saying or implying.

Posted by right | September 27, 2007 1:14 PM

Cigarette smoke stinks and clings.

Even if it were as healthy as a walk in the desert, it would be a nasty habit.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | September 27, 2007 1:21 PM

"So yeah, it's about nannying (i.e. improving the health of) smokers. So what? -- it works."

I don't want them to use this line of reasoning to make it ridiculously inconvenient to drink (such as banning bars, or in San Diego banning alcohol on all beaches). It's not the governments job to be my mommy.

Posted by JordanT | September 27, 2007 1:21 PM

Man, Ambinder is an idiot. He says (without linking to any source):

"Richardson, Gravel, Kucinich, Biden and Dodd would endorse a national law banning smoking."

Of course, none of those guys would endorse anything of the sort.

A law banning smoking in public places might make more sense.

(Personally, I'm all for banning smoking in public places, but a national law makes no sense, and is difficult to justify constitutionally . . .

Posted by rea | September 27, 2007 1:22 PM

Do smoking bans actually lead to better health for former smokers? Respiratory, certainly. It is my understanding that lots of former smokers turn to food as a replacement.

Not a smoker, so I don't know.

Posted by Klug | September 27, 2007 1:22 PM

Shall I be the one to point out that this isn't something that the federal government ought to be worried about, that state and county and city governments (not to mention restaurant owners in my area)seem to be doing a good job of sorting it out?

I guess I will.

Posted by Don K | September 27, 2007 1:28 PM

Don K,

These are D.C. Democrats, so what you just said is pure jibberish to them.

Posted by too many steves | September 27, 2007 1:36 PM

Argh. Second hand smoke is a hazard. This isn't about taking someone's freedom away. It's about taking someone's freedom away to do other people harm. If I were addicted to spritzing people with DDT, I wouldn't get much sympathy. It's the same with smoking bans. (I've been free of DDT for ten months by the way!)

For the record: I'm not interested in the health of smokers even though I know that their choices drive up health care usage blah, blah, blah. Let them smoke. Just not around me.

Posted by eRobin | September 27, 2007 1:37 PM

Heart attacks go down by a decent percentage in towns where they ban indoor smoking.

Posted by Susie from Philly | September 27, 2007 1:39 PM

Banning smoking in public places should be a no brainer. In WA state they did it a couple years ago. Thankfully we will in Oregon soon as well (most of the bars I hang out in have very few smokers anyway, but even a little bit is annoying), I was in an Indian Casino last weekend (where the ban doesn't apply of course) God I forgot how miserable it is being in a place full of smokers, I was just there a couple hours and my throat was sore for the rest of the day, my clothes stank.

Posted by Eric K | September 27, 2007 1:43 PM

Most restaurants here in Washington state (you know, the "other" Washington) don't allow smoking. The people who really benefit from these bans are the workers, not the customers; they're spared 30-50 hours a week of tobacco exposure, which probably lowers their cancer rates. People like me, who are allergic to tobacco smoke, also benefit. I also grew up with smokers, back when it was acceptable to smoke around one's children, so I already have had a lot of exposure and don't need any more (I never smoked myself). None of this has anything to do with "persecuting" anyone; it's a very important health issue.

Posted by beckya57 | September 27, 2007 1:45 PM

Smoking indoors is just disgusting, although I might have a different outlook if I was still smoking and lived in a colder climate than I did when I was smoking (So Cal). But they allow smoking in some bars here in Portland, and it is honestly nauseating to go into a place and smell the accumulated smoke. At that point, I just leave, so I think HRC was right about the whole business in restaurants and "other places" will increase.

Smoking outdoors is fine, and I got irate when I used to hear people complaining about second hand smoke, outdoors, in smoggy, brown-skied Los Angeles.

Posted by dk | September 27, 2007 1:50 PM

Just as long as we don't install those detectors that fine people for cursing in public. That would be a fucking Orwellian nightmare.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | September 27, 2007 1:57 PM

Many working class people like to smoke, and hang out in places that allow smoking. But of course their desires and habits are crude, and not even worth considering in this thread. Golly, I wonder why all those dumb billies out there seem hostile to Ivy League Beltway liberals?

That aside, how come Don K is the only guy who noticed that this issue shouldn't even concern the snakes who are competing for national office?

Posted by sglover | September 27, 2007 2:03 PM

As long as we're engaging in brain-dead David Brooks-caliber political sociology, sglover, I'll point out that working class people like to curse, and hang out in places that allow cursing. I'm looking out for the interests of the common people, damn it.

But then again, I went to public schools and my office is at the exit before the Beltway, so perhaps I'm not the target of your diatribe.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | September 27, 2007 2:09 PM

As a son of people who get very ill from cigarette smoke, liberal cultural elitist and occassional connoisseur of fine tobacco products, I propose not a blanket ban on tobacco products, but a ban on consumption in public spaces of those particular products that make my parents sick and offend my asthetic sensibilities -- cheap cigarettes with acrid smoke that really gets into your lungs and sinuses and gets your IgE counts up.

Fine cigars and fancy pipe tobaccos should be allowed. Perhaps we should even discuss ending that ban on certain Cuban products ...

Posted by DAS | September 27, 2007 2:10 PM

OK, let's talk about drinking.

The health effects are just as bad as those of smoking (livers don't regenerate damaged tissue, lungs do), the negative psychological and social effects are so ubiquitous, that we don't even notice them anymore or try to absorb and even glorify them culturally, while smoking has no (or very little) such effects. And to anyone who says that there is no such thing as passive drinking, i.e. being aversely affected by people who drink while oneself doesn't, I could cite any number of statistics detailing the major role of alcohol in violent crime, domestic violence and car accidents.

Yet, everybody loves to talk about the horribleness of smoking, while next to nobody is talking about the destruction and harm caused by alcohol or even, gasp, restricting its usage.

Posted by novakant | September 27, 2007 2:11 PM

Novakant: we tried that already. You know, "Prohibition"?

Posted by Thlayli | September 27, 2007 2:27 PM

novakant -

If you drink in public it only affects me if you do something stupid when you're drunk - like run me over with your car or start throwing punches at me. There's no need to restrict drinking anymore than it already is because those things are already recognized as harmful to me and laws are in place to prevent them (in the form of drunk driving and assault laws).

When you smoke in public, on the other hand, you cause direct harm to me in the form of your damn smoke. If cigarettes were smokeless I wouldn't care if people smoked in public or not. But they aren't and they pollute my breathing space even in supposedly "non-smoking" sections of restaurants. Smokers can't control their nasty habit and keep it to themselves, so it's become up to the rest of us to make them stop blowing smoke in our faces. And given the popularity of smoking bans in all of the cities I've been to that have them, I don't see them going away in the big urban centers anytime soon.

Also, Matt, I know you're being funny with the "persecute smokers as vigorously possible with every legal tool available" bit, but there's some truth behind it. My super-conservative, anti-union, anti-government regulation, Republican Dad is now an ex-smoker - and he has no problem voting for smoking bans and getting smokers kicked out and fined in bars and restaurants he goes too. There's nothing like the zeal of the convert, I suppose.

Posted by NonyNOny | September 27, 2007 2:34 PM

Waaait a minute: "livers don't regenerate damaged tissue, lungs do"

That sounds really wrong to me. IANA biologist or a physician, but what I know tells me that's an incorrect generalization.

Posted by Klug | September 27, 2007 2:36 PM

'Novakant: we tried that already. You know, "Prohibition"?'

It improved public health and, contrary to popular opinion, reduced crime.

Prohibition was repealed because people really like drinking. People don't like smoking as much. If it turns out they do, the smoking bans will go away.

Posted by Njorl | September 27, 2007 2:41 PM

"When you smoke in public, on the other hand, you cause direct harm to me in the form of your damn smoke."

It's not as much that I have a problem with a ban on smoking inside, what I have a problem with is people claiming that cigarette smoke outdoors is giving them lung disease. This is the case in the city of Del Mar, where you are not allowed to even smoke outside.

Posted by JordanT | September 27, 2007 2:43 PM

You know, "Prohibition"?

That was a total ban, and AFAIK close to nobody would want that; close to nobody is proposing a total ban on smoking either. There is a lot of room between a total ban and the current policy of allowing almost unlimited access to cheap alcohol at a huge cost to society as a whole. But even if we're not talking about mandatory restrictions, a bit of balance in the public discussion of smoking vs. alcohol would go a long way.

Posted by novakant | September 27, 2007 2:46 PM

next to nobody is talking about the destruction and harm caused by alcohol

Don't be silly, novakant. Lots of people talk about the health effects of alcohol -- that's why we have laws about DUI and underage drinking and groups like MADD and AA and doctors ask people about their drinking habits and alcoholic drinks are taxed more heavily than other beverages and etc. and etc. and etc.

Of course the two cases aren't exactly parallel -- the optimum amount of smoking from a health standpoint is very definitely zero, while moderate amounts of alcohol are harmless or even beneficial. but lots of people drink more than moderate amounts and helping them drink less is a perfectly reasonable goal for government and other institutions.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 27, 2007 2:51 PM

That sounds really wrong to me. IANA biologist or a physician, but what I know tells me that's an incorrect generalization. - Klug

I am a biologist, but not the kind that would know anything about any actual living organism unless it was ground up, suspended in water, spun in a centrifuge and the various proteins purified from it (i.e. I'm more of a biochemist).

Still, I seem to remember (and this has been confirmed by wikipedia -- although neither my memory nor wikipedia are to be trusted 100%) from physiology courses that the liver actually has far more ability to regenerate than any other organ.

The problem with alcohol consumption is not just that it damages the liver, but it causes scar-tissue and what not to replace the liver ... thus it interferes with the liver's ability to regenerate itself as well as damaging it per se.

Posted by DAS | September 27, 2007 2:51 PM

There is a lot of room between a total ban and the current policy of allowing almost unlimited access to cheap alcohol at a huge cost to society as a whole.

This is true, of course. But it's not like there's a fixed quantity of public health policy-stuff available so that doing more about smoking means doing less about drinking. On the contrary, I'm sure that the success of policies to reduce smoking will make it easier to address the public health issues around alcohol.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 27, 2007 2:56 PM

You're missing the larger point, all of you.

When Simon Phoenix escapes cryoprison there will be hell to pay.

Posted by sangfroid826 | September 27, 2007 3:05 PM

those things are already recognized as harmful to me and laws are in place to prevent them

The laws are in place, but on the whole they don't prevent anything: violent crime and domestic violence levels are pretty stable and in the former case about 50% of it is alcohol related, in the latter the numbers are likely even higher. So a reduced general alcohol consumption would certainly make quite a difference. Your chances of being a victim of violence are far, far higher than your chances of developing lung cancer due to second hand smoke - and it's a fair bet that few men ever beat their wives or children because they smoked too many cigarettes. The prohibition was a failure of course, but what is often overlooked is that one of the driving forces behind it were the wives of men who brutalized them under the influence of alcohol and/or drank away their wages in the pub.

Posted by novakant | September 27, 2007 3:06 PM

The problem with alcohol consumption is not just that it damages the liver, but it causes scar-tissue and what not to replace the liver ... thus it interferes with the liver's ability to regenerate itself as well as damaging it per se.

I'm not a biologist either, but as far as I know there is a certain point of no return when unhealthy livers develop such scar tissue you mentioned, i.e. cirhossis which is irreversible.

Posted by novakant | September 27, 2007 3:12 PM

Novakant, you make a good argument for more effective regulation of alcohol. but what does that have to do with bans on smoking in enclosed public spaces?

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 27, 2007 3:12 PM

DAS, novokant:

The other claim that I found surprising is that lung tissue can regenerate itself. That's a new one on me.

I was under the impression that lung tissue was relatively fragile.

Posted by Klug | September 27, 2007 3:21 PM

but what does that have to do with bans on smoking in enclosed public spaces?

Well, over here (UK) the discussion is over, so maybe that's why I'm not very interested in it anymore. What I was trying to highlight is the imbalance between the energy, outrage and money put into the whole smoking debate and the conspicuous comparative silence when it comes to discussing alcohol abuse, which in my view is a far greater societal ill.

Posted by novakant | September 27, 2007 3:39 PM

Here's an idea--if you don't like being in bars with smokers because the smoke stinks and it makes you cough--don't go there.

If enough people feel the same way, the bars will ban smoking on their own. . .

Of course if it's really just a minor inconvenience, and the increases in health risks are rather small probability wise, it might not be worth it for you to stop going. Heck, you like to drink, and hang out with your friends. You can put up with it for the evening.

This way we don't have to impose on those who like to smoke by making them go outside, which they don't (presumably) enjoy.

How can we possibly weigh these two things? Non-smokers find smoking to be an inconvenience and a minor health risk, and smokers don't like to be forced to spend a portion of their evening standing outdoors. Well wait a second, there's no market failure here! The market should be able to weigh these costs and benefits by the choices of the individuals involved.

This idea that it's the same as someone who's "Addicted to spraying other people with DDT" is absurd because it is essentially VOLUNTARY. I don't have to be exposed to smoke at bars, I can avoid it by avoiding bars. If it were efficient to ban smoking in bars, the bars would do it themselves.

All this is is an instance of an inconveinced majority enforcing their will on the minority.

Posted by Wilson | September 27, 2007 4:24 PM

There's another reason to ban smoking outdoors: smokers are apparently under the delusion that cigarette butts are not actually "litter," and therefore can be thrown on the ground without littering. Gum-chewers have the same delusion about chewed-up gum, which is why gum-chewing was banned in Singapore.

Posted by me2i81 | September 27, 2007 4:33 PM

Hooray, let's turn all the world into Singapore!

Fun, fun, fun.

Posted by novakant | September 27, 2007 4:48 PM

Soooooo..... when the gun ban comes will you so easily give you your new-found love?

Posted by Ethel-to-Tilly | September 27, 2007 4:55 PM

It improved public health and, contrary to popular opinion, reduced crime.
I'm not going to do your research for you but you shouldn't get your talking points from the DEA. Read Drug Crazy, maybe. Or anyone without a vested interest in keeping the insane drug war going.

Posted by JasonC | September 27, 2007 4:57 PM

You people have a strange idea of what a citizens relationship with their government should be. Restaurants and bars are NOT public spaces. They are private businesses that should be able to determine whether or not their clientele want to be able to smoke or whether they would better serve their customers by banning smoking.

Posted by JasonC | September 27, 2007 5:02 PM

Many working class people like to smoke, and hang out in places that allow smoking. But of course their desires and habits are crude, and not even worth considering in this thread.

There you go, bringing class into it.

Posted by eRobin | September 27, 2007 5:03 PM

There's a law against having dogs in restaurants.

There's a law against having bare feet in restaurants.

There's a law that says I, as a woman, can't take my shirt off in a restaurant.

In a restaurant there's a law that keeps me from walking over and defecating on your table.

Why exactly is it so ridiculous that I also don't want your nasty smoke in my face?

There's a law prohibiting you from crapping on my table. There should also be a law that prohibits you from blowing smoke on it. DUH.

Posted by anonymous | September 27, 2007 5:37 PM

People have been smoking for oh, I don't know, several centuries in restaurants, bars and pubs and they got thrown out for doing everything else anonymous mentioned.

Posted by novakant | September 27, 2007 5:51 PM

There's a law prohibiting you from crapping on my table.

I'm sure this would violate a law or three, but I don't think there's a specific section in your state penal code to charge someone with restaurant table defecation in the first degree.

There are bars that specialize in women taking their shirts off. I've never seen any reason why the state couldn't grant licenses that allow certain restaurants and bars to be smoking establishments, just as they do with liquor. But it shouldn't be the default option.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | September 27, 2007 6:00 PM

The issue relative to smoking indoors is very simple. The smokers' rights end where other peoples noses begin.

Posted by SLC | September 27, 2007 6:13 PM

SLC gets to the truth of the matter: the nose! The downright religious zeal with which this issue has been pursued can only be explained with the olfactory senses being both the basest and most powerful of the human senses. Forget all the crap about health, worker's rights and so on - it's about people's oh so sensitive noses. What they didn't factor in is the fact that nightclubs now reek of body odour - hardly an improvement.

Posted by novakant | September 27, 2007 6:47 PM

I think SLC hits it right on the nose, as it were.

In response to everyone's "if you don't like it, don't go" retorts, how exactly would a bar owner know if people don't want smoking in his establishment? Do they walk in the door at opening time and say, "You know, I was thinking of having a drink here, but I don't like smoking, so I won't"? No, they don't go out, or they go elsewhere. They don't take time out of their schedule to say something. So there's a lack of information to be had, which makes that argument imperfect.

Also, if I were in a bar and people were smoking around me, could I go around and politely ask every single person to please stop smoking? I could, but that's being a bit of a wet blanket, not to mention the jerks who would probably take it as fightin' words.

Posted by Jeremy | September 27, 2007 7:00 PM

Well, it's not totally inconceivable to have a few establishments or rooms within establishments where people are allowed to smoke. There are plenty of bars not one of us would ever set a foot in because they're full of binge drinkers, hen parties or the music just sucks. We don't ask the patrons to stop drinking themselves silly or engaging in raucous bawling - we just go someplace else.

Posted by novakant | September 27, 2007 7:11 PM

I've never seen any reason why the state couldn't grant licenses that allow certain restaurants and bars to be smoking establishments, just as they do with liquor.

My idea has always been a law that allows smoking in workplaces only if it's specifically provided for in a collective bargaining agreement. Logic being that if the motivation is to protect workers, then where there is a union bargaining over workplace issues the workers have the ability to weigh that protection against other goals. The incidental but very much intended effect would be massive spike in unionizationr ates in the hotel and restaurant industries...

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 27, 2007 7:13 PM

The problem is the net effect of all these well-meaning bans is they are cumulative in throttling back freedoms. You may like the Democrats smoking ban, but you'll hate the gun ban. You may like ultra-harsh new criminal penalties for young folks between 18-21 caught with alcohol, but you'll hate the Republican idea of stifling abortion rights by wrapping abortionists and chain owners with added counseling requirements, elaborate paperwork.

You may love that schools will ban diet soda and candy bars and replace them with "nutritious" but high calorie fruit juices and honey-fruit-whole grain treats --but you will hate it when the school passes new regulations that your child will be expelled if caught with peanut butter, guns, illicit candy, medicine the "school nurse and administrators" are unaware of and haven't approved.

It was actually delicious that the Dem candidates began talking up their "national laws" banning public space smoking, drinking right after all agreeing that indoctrinating second-graders with reading material of Two Princes in Far Away land who happen to get married in the story. All agreed with the questioner that it is "a wonderful way to teach tolerance as well as reading" and whose parents should support such enlightened efforts to make kids better educated....they supported such books in public schools.

It's amazing how little the parents of the baby boomers imposed Safety Nazi, state indoctrination desires on their children while the boomers now believe in gay marriage indoctrination, Western Civ loathing as official curricula, zero tolerance of candy bars, butter knives brought to school......

I guess because the boomer's parents fought the real Nazis, the Red Terror Stalinists...and believed in freedom instead of state control of individuals for the State's good the boomers favor.

Posted by Chris Ford | September 27, 2007 7:20 PM

You may like the Democrats smoking ban, but you'll hate the gun ban. You may like ultra-harsh new criminal penalties for young folks between 18-21 caught with alcohol, but you'll hate the Republican idea of stifling abortion rights by wrapping abortionists and chain owners with added counseling requirements, elaborate paperwork.

Quite true. My solution is to support the policies I like, and oppose the ones I don't like.

Posted by lemuel pitkin | September 27, 2007 7:23 PM

Every time people accuse right-wingers of authoritarianism, I recall posts like this one, and I smile. When it comes to authoritarianism, the right are pikers compared to the left.

Posted by Al | September 27, 2007 7:37 PM

When it comes to authoritarianism, the right are pikers compared to the left.

Yes, because people who toss US residents in a Cuban prison indefinitely with no access to legal representation, and occasionally waterboarding them, are mere amateurs when compared to the jackbooted fascists who yearn to prevent you from lighting up a Camel Light at TGI Friday's if you damn well please.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | September 27, 2007 8:11 PM

I think most of the arguments used by anti-smoking crusaders for tobacco smoking bans are in bad faith but since it turns out that smoking really is very very bad, in particular second-hand smoke, a public health and worker safety case for smoking bans. I think it's conceivable exceptions could be made for certain locations or types of establishments, or for designated smoking sections, but the zeal of the anti-smoking lobby is so strong and smokers are so unpopular that the chance of that happening is pretty slim. Far more likely will be the development in the more wealthy liberal areas of California, where smoking itself isn't illegal, but being able to legally smoke anywhere within 200 feet of nearly anything, is. Georgia, in a bit of inspiration, is trying to rid itself of registered sex offenders in a similar manner.

But while smoking may become all but illegal, alcohol, thank god, never will. Because the wealthy love their alcohol as much if not more than the hoi polloi.

Posted by DRR | September 27, 2007 8:37 PM

This was already a pretty dumb discussion (I have no idea why I read through the whole damn thing), and then Chris Ford just took it all the way to the Twilight Zone!

I guess because the boomer's parents fought the real Nazis, the Red Terror Stalinists...and believed in freedom instead of state control of individuals for the State's good the boomers favor.

No matter how I read that sentence I can't make any sense of it at all. Another paean to the "greatest generation"? An equation of smoking bans to "Red Terror Stalinists"? I also like when he equated school bans of peanut butter to school bans of guns. Rock on, C F!

Posted by Rob Mac | September 27, 2007 8:48 PM

All this stuff about the smoking ban helping people quit? Excellent. Only it's wrong:

http://tobaccoanalysis.blogspot.com/2007/09/new-study-claims-that-new-york-state.html

"Although the study did not determine trends in heart attacks in smokers versus nonsmokers, it notes that there was not a significant decline in smoking prevalence associated with the implementation of the statewide smoking ban..."

And that's from a guy who's been supporting smoking bans for 20 years.

Posted by Sam M | September 28, 2007 7:30 AM

"There's a law prohibiting you from crapping on my table. There should also be a law that prohibits you from blowing smoke on it. DUH."

Isn't there a law prohibiting giving birth to crap like you?

Posted by Modus | September 28, 2007 9:17 AM

"Yes, because people who toss US residents in a Cuban prison indefinitely with no access to legal representation, and occasionally waterboarding them, are mere amateurs when compared to the jackbooted fascists who yearn to prevent you from lighting up a Camel Light at TGI Friday's if you damn well please."

There are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.
–James Madison

You could probably count the # of US residents in Guantanamo on one hand..

Posted by Mike T. | September 28, 2007 9:31 AM

Consider a smoker like any other emitter of non-approved pollution.

(And it's not the added risk from cancer; it's the tons of us who are allergic to smoke.)

Not to mention the role of smoke particulates in facilitating disease through the carrying of microbes. (One reason why airlines finally banned smoking on flights. )

I'd have more sympathy for smokers did I not remember the tons of times I'd be in a non-smoking section and a smoker would light up right under the sign "NO SMOKING."

Smokers acted like jerks for too long and the backlash came.

Posted by grumpy realist | September 28, 2007 12:17 PM

I take it that cars emitting carbon dioxide at the rate of 7 billion tons a year for the US alone and growing with the emission source generally located at toddler mouth level is a negligible problem.

The human capacity for ignoring anything that is not immediately tangible continues to amaze me.

Posted by novakant | September 28, 2007 2:23 PM

The liberals believe in prohibiting all unhealthy behaviors.

Except BFing, of course.

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Posted by exsmoker | September 30, 2007 11:25 PM