News: The hard part: Making it stick

I think the one thing Jeff and I agree on is that we are just going to have to agree to disagree. This is "A" talking to "B".

But I bet we disagree on which side is A and which side is B.

:)

Mikey I think you need a hug. :)

Walt said:

I live by the principle that people aren't stupid and will do what's best for them.

Then let's remove all speed limits on highways.

We all have to travel and drive on streets and highways, and they're public. Privately owned businesses are not public, and we choose to go to them.

Businesses already face a multitude of restrictions.

And I don't agree with a lot of those as well.

Those people choose to live there. If they don't like polluted groundwater, they can move someplace where there is clean groundwater.

People choose Earth? Where are the exits?

i think this is just another version of overreactive people screaming "WONT SOMEBODY THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!??"...

we have a smoking ban here in Chicago. we have a ban on foie gras, because it is tantamount to animal cruelty. i agree with the latter, but not with the former. the animal has no choice. the people who dont smoke DO.

there are so many places people can go to that are smoke-free. i am just tired of others telling us how to live or not live.

my husband and my best friend both smoke. i willingly sit in the smoking sections of establishments so i can spend my time with them. i dont whine that the smoke is bothering me. i would rather sit in the smoke and be with them than tell them they have to sit in non-smoking with me. they outnumber me, 2 to 1.

also i HATE it when a place is non-smoking and they have to LEAVE the table and me to go outside to smoke.

i just get tired of all the WHINING in this country these days. a lot of us grew up in the 70's and 80's...we didnt have bike helmets, seat belt laws, no smoking places, we still went trick-or-treating (which apparently no one does anymore), played on playground equipment that was made of metal and played TAG on (GASP!) concrete!!

and you know what? we are ALL fine!! we are all reasonably well-adjusted ADULTS and we suffered through the hazards of childhood. heck, i drank UNPASTUERIZED apple cider from a place in Michigan my WHOLE LIFE and i am still here. they pastuerize it now and it doesnt taste the same.

why should others be allowed to tell me what is best for MY safety? isnt that for ME to decide and NOT someone else?

Then let's remove all speed limits on highways. People don't have a right to drive on the highway. They can use secondary roads if they feel it's unsafe on the highway. People will drive reasonable because they know what's best for them.

They do it in parts of Europe and it works very well, it has also worked very well in parts of Montana and Wyoming. It also works well in Michigan, even though there is a speed limit. :P

But the owner never had a right to allow smoking either.

The owner had the right to allow or not allow smoking in the owners establishment prior to this law. Now the owner is forced to not allow it.

This whole thing is a huge blow in the face of the American public concerning their rights.

my husband and my best friend both smoke. i willingly sit in the smoking sections of establishments so i can spend my time with them.

Then you do smoke...you just dont have the cig in your mouth.

In my opinion, this is certainly not a huge blow to the rights of the American public. In fact, just the opposite. This is a perfect example of the power of the people. The "American public" of Ohio are the people who wanted this. They wanted it badly enough to get it on a ballot. They wanted it so bad that they educated voters on the topic (not to get confused with the tricky wording in issue 4), and got it passed. The people are the government in this country. We shape it. We change it. It evolves.

If this issue is such a huge blow to the American public's rights, then where was the effort to stop it? The only opposition I ever saw was from Big Tobacco...hmmm...now there's a trustworthy source!

Maybe some of the "passion" that drives me on this issue is that as a former smoker, I will always take a chance to smack the tobacco companies a blow. It feels good to know I just pissed them off.

It took a lot of hard work to get issue 4 passed. "whining" doesnt get an issue in the ballot. Screaming "what about the children" doesnt get that issue passed. It took an idea, which turned into a belief, which turned into a movement, which is now a law. If this is such a blow to your liberties as an American....such a hateful "tyranny of the majority"...then I challenge you to work just as hard to change it!

Go forth brave citizens....fight to get your liberties back! Its the red scare of 2006!

*** Edited 11/12/2006 6:02:05 PM UTC by Kevinj***
*** Edited 11/12/2006 6:14:11 PM UTC by Kevinj***

Jeff said:
We all have to travel and drive on streets and highways, and they're public. Privately owned businesses are not public, and we choose to go to them.

I realize my example was exaggerated to make a point, but I can use to same arguments being made above to remove driving restrictions from some (but not all) roads. Speeding laws exist to provide protection for drivers.

A business owner is not able to do whatever he or she wants simply because it's a private business (civil rights, employee protection, health standards, etc.). There's nothing new there. A smoking ban protects employees and customers in much the same way labor laws exist to protect workers.

Jeff said:
People choose Earth? Where are the exits?

I'm not saying that's a good idea. I'm merely showing the flaw in the argument that if someone doesn't like it, they should just go elsewhere. Honestly, if you believe some of the arguments in this thread, it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say the free market can protect the environment.

servo said:
the animal has no choice

I'm not sure why you'd value the health of an animal over the health of a human, but I guess we're all different. Animals are not the same as humans. Otherwise, eating meat would be illegal.

servo said:
i am just tired of others telling us how to live or not live

But you're apparently OK with telling others to either accept a health risk or go somewhere else. Smokers in Ohio can still negatively impact their family and friends, they just can't do it in a public place. Laws against jaywalking don't mean you can't cross the road, they mean you have to cross in designated places. Issue 5 doesn't mean you can't smoke, it just means a smoker's ability to harm an innocent bystander has been reduced.

servo said:
i dont whine that the smoke is bothering me.

Maybe you don't whine, but do you wheeze? I don't mind at all if you want to increase your risk for lung cancer. But in a public business or workplace, there is no right for your husband or best friend to harm others who don't want to accept that risk.

servo said:
also i HATE it when a place is non-smoking and they have to LEAVE the table and me to go outside to smoke.

I thought you said you didn't whine. :)

servo said:
we didnt have bike helmets, seat belt laws, no smoking places, we still went trick-or-treating (which apparently no one does anymore), played on playground equipment that was made of metal and played TAG on (GASP!) concrete

This reminds me of that stupid e-mail forward People Over 35 Should be Dead. Yeah, don't advances in health and safety really irritate you? I bet you're pissed that they discovered penicillin. Bayer used to market heroin as a cough medicine for children. Too bad the stupid government stuck their nose in private business and passed a law banning heroin. And don't even get me started on advances in surgery. My great-grandparents didn't have heart bypass and they did fine!

Coastern3rd said:
The owner had the right to allow or not allow smoking in the owners establishment prior to this law.

No he didn't. The law put into place by Issue 5 is not unconstitutional. It doesn't even make a change to the constitution (because a change is not necessary), unlike R.J. Reynolds, who tried to blatantly buy their way into the constitution.

Coastern3rd said:
This whole thing is a huge blow in the face of the American public concerning their rights.

(I actually debated whether to include the following few paragraphs, lest I open a huge can of worms :) )

Just as no one in this country has a right to use cocaine, no one has the right to smoke tobacco. It is only because of our society that it is still legal. If you're a smoker, your rights have not be infringed by Issue 5. If you're a business owner, your rights have not been taken away. However, Issue 5 does protect the citizens from an unwanted health risk.

If a law were passed tomorrow to prohibit smoking, and it was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court, I don't see why it wouldn't be upheld. In my uneducated legal opinion, it would not even take a constitutional amendment to outlaw smoking. Smoking is so entrenched in our society, that an outright ban is unlikely anytime soon and would probably cause more problems than it's worth. That doesn't mean it isn't the right thing to do, but sometimes the right thing isn't always possible, or even the best thing.

I can already hear the cries of Prohibition. The ban on alcohol was wrong and unnecessary. Alcohol is very much not the same as smoking. It is widely abused, yes, just like food, but in moderation it is safe. There are even some health benefits. Smoking, though, has absolutely no redeeming quality. There is no amount that is safe, (insert a million other reasons here).

However, smoking has not been outlawed. Tobacco is explicitly exempt from the Controlled Substances Act. You can still smoke at home, outside, in designated areas at the nursing home, in the car with your kids, and the long list continues. Protection has merely been put into place to limit the exposure of unwilling participants.

This country already bans many forms of tobacco advertising, forces cigarette makers to include highly visible health warnings, and use taxes on tobacco to discourage its use. But now, all of the sudden, everyone is up in arms because non-smokers are being protected from unwanted exposure? Come on.

"The debate is over. The science is clear. Secondhand smoke is not a mere annoyance but a serious health hazard." - Surgeon General Richard Carmona

*** Edited 11/12/2006 6:57:07 PM UTC by Walt***

Kevinj said:
such a hateful "tyranny of the majority"...then I challenge you to work just as hard to change it!

I can think of some election results in some House and Senate races that I might consider a tyranny of the majority. :)

*** Edited 11/12/2006 6:33:03 PM UTC by Walt***

Kevinj said:
In my opinion, this is certainly not a huge blow to the rights of the American public.

Your opinion isn't logical. Before, Americans (or more precisely, Ohioans) could choose whether or not to allow smoking at their business, and people could choose whether or not to be patrons of those businesses. Now that choice doesn't exist.

Walt said:
I'm merely showing the flaw in the argument that if someone doesn't like it, they should just go elsewhere.

But Walt, there's a fundamental difference here that everyone is ignoring, and is instead bringing up examples that don't follow the same conditions. Government should prohibit things and make laws about things we all have to deal with whether we like it or not, like highway laws and violent crime, where people could take actions that would involuntarily expose others to something harmful.

While I hate smoking, it's not something that anyone is involuntarily exposed to. If you're unwilling to see that distinction, then yes, you'll never see this side of the argument.

And the funny thing is, some business owners did a pretty good job of trying to manage the expectations of their customers on their own. The owner of the BW3 in Medina, for example, opened the place with a lot of smoke eaters, and to this day it's one of the few bars I can spend a lot of time in comfortably. The business owner made a decision, and I did too. I go there instead of the crappy dive bar closer to my home. I know some of their stores offer non-smoking areas as well. The free market worked.

Jeff said:
While I hate smoking, it's not something that anyone is involuntarily exposed to. If you're unwilling to see that distinction, then yes, you'll never see this side of the argument.

With that argument, I can eliminate every regulation that governs workplace safety along with the Fair Labor Standards Act. Are you opposed to OSHA? To the FLSA? Protecting against secondhand smoke is no different than protecting workers against asbestos, or falls, or forced overtime, etc.

Since there is no debate on the dangers of secondhand smoke, smoke in the workplace should be treated no differently than other workplace safety issues. People who defend a business's "right" to allow smoking should also defend their "right" to be free from construction site rules, labor standards, overtime laws, safety restrictions on machines and equipment, and every other workplace regulation.

If I own a construction business, and I don't provide fall protection for my employees, and Joe falls 300 feet, can I say, "Hey, Joe knew the risks. He could have worked somewhere else." Of course not. But if Joe works on the line, and the business allows smoking, and Joe develops lung cancer, Joe should have known better to take that job? That doesn't work.

The Jungle ultimately led to the formation of the Food and Drug Administration. Unfortunately, free market isn't 100% perfect, because free market still has a human element. There will always be the need to have some form of regulations on business. There can be discussion on what should and should not be included, but there is plenty of precedence for the protection of workers.

But apparently I missed the part of Issue 5 that said this is only about eating in restaurants. I suppose if people keep going down "restaurant road," no one will understand this side of the argument.

*** Edited 11/12/2006 11:54:08 PM UTC by Walt***

Every restaurant I've ever worked at gave me the option of choosing whether or not I wanted to serve in smoking or non-smoking. Not sure if thats a universal thing or not. I always chose smoking, they tipped me better.

Your opinion isn't logical. Before, Americans (or more precisely, Ohioans) could choose whether or not to allow smoking at their business, and people could choose whether or not to be patrons of those businesses. Now that choice doesn't exist.

I appreciate your honesty. :) From my perspective as a non-smoking consumer, my choices greatly increased. Why should smokers be allowed to limit my choices? Of course I could choose whether or not to go somewhere or stay home...or just hang out in Bob Evans every weekend. You are exactly right (and logical!) that I have a choice...and believe me, Jeff, I have been exercising that right to choose. I am now ecstatic by all the new choices I now have!

I would argue that this is an equally strong blow to the tobacco companies. Would you not agree? I think it is a powerful message to send to them, in that they were unable, as Walt said, to "buy their way" into Ohio's constitution.

(insert voice of old Obi Wan Kenobi here)

What I tell you is true....from....a certain point of view....
*** Edited 11/13/2006 1:06:00 AM UTC by Kevinj***

I'd love nothing more than to see the tobacco companies go away, but only if it's because consumers cause them to go away.

Walt said:
Since there is no debate on the dangers of secondhand smoke, smoke in the workplace should be treated no differently than other workplace safety issues.

Then the law should be about workplace safety... not what people do in their leisure time.

As I see the discussion is winding down, I'll be brief. :)

I would agree that this should really fall under workplace safety. The politics of the situation would probably not allow that, though. But, then again, putting it solely in that category does ignore customer safety issues. While I believe this is a primarily a workplace issue, there is a customer aspect that should not be ignored.

I think its amazing how much discussion and strong feelings a minor issue like smoking causes. Yes, I called it minor, because in the overall scheme of things, its a miniscule issue. However, when it comes to the government telling people who they can and can't marry, people have no qualms about eliminating freedoms. If you guys want to talk about freedoms and the government literally controlling people's lives, look at gay marriage issues. That issue doesn't kill people, doesn't give people dining at a restaurant cancer, and doesn't really affect anyone else's freedoms. However, the government still feels the need to say its illegal and people can't do it. Go figure.

^ w0rd!

Whats with Jeff not enforcing the quote rule?

Then the law should be about workplace safety... not what people do in their leisure time.

Hey Jeff I agree, but only if your leisure time means that those that don't smoke are not harmed. People that serve you in your leisure time deserve safety too, including CP employees. I still smoke, but only an occasional cigar for leisure and I love it! But I don't impose this on others in public places and especially not my kids.

:)

halltd said:
If you guys want to talk about freedoms and the government literally controlling people's lives, look at gay marriage issues. That issue doesn't kill people, doesn't give people dining at a restaurant cancer, and doesn't really affect anyone else's freedoms.

Gay marriage promotes terrorism! Gays hate freedom, duh.

The operative question for this forum should be this: should people be allowed to smoke on roller coasters? I mean, granted, you don't want the lit cigarette blowing out of someone else's mouth and burning a rider behind them in the face. But what if you could devise some sort of face mask that absolutely kept your Camel Filter locked in place? Imagine the thrill of sucking down that nicotine pleasure whilst cresting Dragster? It'd be virtually a heart attack in a bottle. As a plus, you could fancy it up and add enticing features like an automatic re-light mechanism in case your cancer stick got shaken out by Mean Streak. Cedar Point could then establish smoking and non-smoking trains. Of course the dippers (and I mean tobacco chewers, not Geauga Lake afficionados) would complain. So they'd have to have dipping and non-dipping cars. And the cokeheads would want in on the action as well. Where would it end? Maybe they should just stick all the blowhards on one train and be done with it.

I'm tired, and I'm going to bed now. ;)

Walt said:
If I own a construction business, and I don't provide fall protection for my employees, and Joe falls 300 feet, can I say, "Hey, Joe knew the risks. He could have worked somewhere else." Of course not. But if Joe works on the line, and the business allows smoking, and Joe develops lung cancer, Joe should have known better to take that job? That doesn't work.

People are injured and killed in construction accidents all the time, regardless of measures to prevent accidents. Like working in a smoky bar, they know the risk of exposing themselves to a dangerous work environment. They choose to do it for whatever reason suits them.

Commercial fishing and farming are two of the most dangerous occupations in America. People choose those occupations while knowing the risks. Logically, if you ban one dangerous activity that workers willfully and voluntarily engage in (working in a smoky location), you need to consistently apply it to all work environments. Therefore, we should ban commercial fishing and farming.

Walt said:
The Jungle ultimately led to the formation of the Food and Drug Administration. Unfortunately, free market isn't 100% perfect, because free market still has a human element. There will always be the need to have some form of regulations on business. There can be discussion on what should and should not be included, but there is plenty of precedence for the protection of workers.

A restaurant, meat packer, or other food preparer should be regulated because bad food does not represent a known danger to those eating it. "Smoke" is visible, able to be smelled, and represents a clear and present danger. If I go into a smoky restaurant, I voluntarily choose to be subjected to the danger. "Bad food" is invisible and is not an apparent danger. If I eat a bad cut of meat, I am involuntarily subjected to danger.

The asbestos argument falls in the middle. If an employee is made fully aware of asbestos at the interview, they can choose not to subject themself to the danger. If they are never notified, then the business owner should be responsible for presenting an unknown danger to the workers.

But the bottom line is that the well-known dangers of tobacco smoke works against anti-smoking proponents on this issue. Everyone knows it's dangerous, so exposing yourself to it is voluntary and you should be responsible. The only way you could claim involuntary exposure is if you were completely obvlivious to the danger of smoke.

Kids, for example, may largely be oblivious to the danger. But their parents choose what is safe for them. If you're going to fine someone, fine the parents for subjecting them to danger. Don't fine the business owners, who merely offer a building, food, and rules. They don't control the free will of patrons who enter.

This is a lengthy thread...with quality discussion.

Where am I?

In any event, I want to reiterate OldCpers comment....this is as much about protecting the employees as it is the guests. Having worked at the Breakers for a few years I can assure you the smoking in the Rotunda was unavoidable. Plus, I had a room on one of the upper floors of the Rotunda.

Guess what smoke does? It rises. So, I had to deal with the smokiness in my room on a regular basis.

Smokers should either smoke in their rooms or take it outside.