I finally have reached my breaking point and felt compelled to write a letter in response to last week’s editorial. I find it increasingly disturbing
that a publication which purports to call itself a “business” journal continues to preach anti-business rhetoric.
To devote what seems to be every other weekly editorial to chastise state legislators for their failure to enact a statewide
smoking ban, is a smack to the face of American capitalism.
The last time I checked cigarettes are a legal product and smoking them in the sanctity of your own home or in a myriad of
other places indoors and out is still not a prosecutable offense. So, my premise is that business owners should be allowed
to determine whether their bar, restaurant, casino, or private club is smoking or not. Their establishments are after all
private property.
In the interest of full disclosure, let me say that while I am not a cigarette smoker, I am an occasional cigar smoker. I
absolutely do not want to eat my filet mignon next to a table of smokers, so I choose to eat at Eddie Merlot’s, which
has banned smoking. But if I want to have a beer and a cigar while I chat with friends, I now have several choices in which
to do so. Enacting a comprehensive ban on liberty as you call for reminds me of Orwell’s “1984”.
The system we have now works, period. Economic factors determine which establishments are smoking and which are smoke free.
Many restaurants have gone smokeless such as Scotty’s Brewhouse. Scott Wise will tell you that he is smoke free because
he makes more money being smoke free.
On the other hand, to not allow smoking in an establishment such as the Indy Cigar Bar or Nikki Blaine’s in which every
patron and worker is fully cognizant of the benefits and risks is akin to discrimination. After all, we all eat and drink.
Next thing you know, we’ll be telling The Cheesecake Factory that they can’t sell cheesecake due to the high fat
content.
Mark my words IBJ, this current movement is a slippery slope of diminishing liberty and business opportunity.
____________
Mark A. Paul
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Greg, it's diluted a LOT more than one in ten. It's more like one in ten thousand, even if you're trying to follow the nasty ol' smoker around so you can enjoy the aroma. I just did an analysis after an article about open air campus bans at the U of PA site and a little analysis using one of the newer outdoor ETS studies and the basic EPA Report figures produced something interesting. Evidently with all this worry about campus smoke, one of those "perpetual grad student" types would have to go to school at Penn for 192 MILLION years on the average in order to get lung cancer from the campus smoke.
:)
MJM
To have an open-air smoking ban absolutely does NOTHING. Open air smoking results in the smoke from a cigarette being diluted with outside air and being carried away in a breeze dramatically reducing it's offensive effects 10 fold... Why the hell would you ban that? It will make no difference... just because you have in your mind that smoking kills people?
There is not ONE SHRED of proof that tobacco products cause any cancer or deaths. It's all speculation based off of very poor science. If we used that science on other things, your fricking car probably puts you at more risk of cancer from the fumes it puts out than cigarettes, but I dont see anyone banning cars and throwing a fit now do I? Its time we start getting our god given rights and dignity back. We are not evil people because we want to smoke. You are evil people for stepping all over us and ridiculing us for it. Leave us alone you frickin bullies!
In California it has become illegal to smoke in your ENCLOSED porch or Patio!! This poses absolutely no health hazzard to ANYONE!! It's just that a few ZEALOTS can't stand to even look at it.
IT HAS NOTHING to do with health. It is a VERY HIGHLY FUNDED, politically active, ant-smoking movement, that will stoop to ANYTHING to keep their pharmaceutical funds flowing in. And it's all been based on the constantly repeated, PROVEN fallacy, that second hand smoke is some kind of boogy man!!
It's time that people woke up to what is going on here!! We are headed in the same direction Germany was before the world woke up, and realized the MILLIONS were persecuted and eventually murdered, simply because a small group of ZEALOTS - didn't like their lifstyle!
Slippery Slope? I think we've already slipped.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of "Dissecting Antismokers' Brains"