PD –

We usually agree, so it’s sorta nice not too on this one :-)

While, in my heart, I agree with the libertarian concept that this should not be regulated, I just hate smoking.

Also, restaurtants are, in many way, public gathering places. We regulate pollution in general…so I have no problem regulating it in specific.

Pilt

Totally concur. Bar patrons – cigarettes = Armageddon!

However, if you happen to have a job at one of those establishments, you are screwed.

Smoking is becoming increasingly marginalized, as it should be. I will suggest that “smoking and drinking go together” will be seen as a quaint concept in the next ten years.

The real answer is to simply outlaw smoking in every restaurant or bar, making it an across-the-board solution….

Pilt

I have to disagree with you here, Pilt. If people want to smoke and restaurants want to permit smoking, it’s ok with me. Smokers, who pay plenty in state and federal taxes on their vice, should not be discriminated against.

pd

From a non-smoker perspective, these smoking bans are the dumbest thing to come down the pike in a long time.
If you are concerned about second-hand smoke, don’t patronize bars and restaurants that have a high concentration of smokers. Unless you’re spending 8 hours a day in a smoke-filled room, I doubt inhaling a little second-hand smoke for an hour or so is going to kill you.

pd

Nearly all bars have a high concentration of smokers. People would smoke in hospitals if we let them. While i might only spend 3 or 4 hours in that smoke filled room per week, the bartenders spend several times that many. That is not to say that I don’t mind the smoke, I hate it, it gives me a headache, smells offensive and no doubt damages my lungs. A common complaint in my social circle is that a person can’t come back from a bar without reeking of cigarette smoke. I wish Pennsylvania would join the civilized world and ban smoking in public buildings.

It is ridiculous that I have to suffer because someone else chooses to smoke regardless of how long I am in a pub. My personal freedoms are being violated by a choice I have no control over made by someone else who is idiotic enough to smoke cigarettes! second hand smoke is bad plain and simple no matter how much you breathe in and needs to be regulated and I should not have to be exposed to health threats because of another person’s poor decisions. This is absolute communism even allowing this to happen!

It is obsurd that I have to put up with you type of people! Communism is the corrupt government telling me that I can’t smoke where I want! Might as well outlaw drinking in bars too! Their second hand alcoholic breathe makes me intoxicated and I can’t drive home! Go ahead and ban smoking everywhere, they won’t be getting my money.

does any one who smokes ever think of the people who work in bars and resturaunts have a rite to breath clean air. and don’t give me the argument , to go find another job, maybe we should say that to coal miners, farmers, asbestos removers or anyone who has to deal with a hazardus materrial why whould we impose regulations to make things safer for any one, I would think that in the year 2006 a employee in a resturaunt would be recognized as haveing a right to work free of carsinigents and apersons rite to spread these deadly chemicles is not a rite at all…. smoke at home around your own kids and family and see how populaar you are…..

I wouldn’t mind second hand smoke if it didn’t cause cancer, emphysema, asthma, and other health problems. If there is a state wide ban of smoking in public places in PA, it will not hurt business. I have spoken with several bar owners and restaurant owners in states where there is a ban, and they have told me that the ban never hurt business, if anything it increased business. People don’t go out to just smoke cigarettes, they go out to drink or eat. Smoking is a secondary thing that occurs. Many people don’t go out because of the cigarette smoke and I have never heard anyone say that they wouldn’t go out to eat or for drinks because they cannot smoke cigarettes. I feel it is unfair for people to have to go to work and breathe in second hand smoke. Pennsylvania would be a healthier state with the ban.

Don’t be a whiny bitch. This isn’t communism, it’s public health. Normally, I wouldn’t care if you put a gun to your head or filled your lungs with carcinogens, but you don’t have a right to take waiters, waitresses and bar tenders with you on your personal path of self destruction. You can smoke anywhere you want to, but you don’t have a right to inflict your stupidness on others.

Sorry, but you are wrong. Just a little will hurt. I grew up with family and relatives that smoke. I do not. I now have asthma. Do you have any idea what it is like to not be able to breath. Try putting a plastic bag over your head and see how it feels. The problem is really with the establishments. If they installed the proper filtration systems, no one would be bothered. Also, to tell me to not go to a bar is stupid. If every place allows smoking, then there is no place for me to patronize. I happen to enjoy a good beer and watch football or hockey at the bar. I cannot sit at the non-smoking tables for 2 reasons, first none of the establishments feel that they should put TV’s in the non-smoking area and second, it is just wrong to take up a table for just drinks and finger food when a waitress is trying to earn a living. I am so glad Jersey went non-smoking. By the way, even the smoking customers agree that the air is cleaner and that the bars are still packed. One more thing, as an example of the ignorant smoker, while sitting at a bar in the middle of the pub, a woman and her husband came and sat down at the end of the bar. Her cigarette smoke drifted down the bar and settled around me and the bartender. Her husband who was getting a full nose full, got up and moved to the otherside of her. What a jerk. No one else could get away from her filthy habit. He should have stayed an sucked it in.

freedom to inflict second hand smoke damage on my children that want to go bowling is not my idea of america, I challenge anyone to name one human that has health problems because they could not smoke indoors. smokers rights end at
the tip of my familys nose.

I agree – how can we get this law passed to ban smoking in PA?? I’m not sure where to start but I’d like to get involved.

Hey Anonymous from 5/21 —

Here’s a personal freedom for you — YOU ARE FREE TO GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. If you don’t like to be around somke in a pub, GO SOMEWHERE ELSE. It’s YOUR CHOICE to continue to “SUFFER” – you’re doing it to yourself. STOP WHINING. You are in a PUBLIC HOUSE. Some people smoke, some don’t. You cannot take away or prevent someone from engaging in a LEGAL ACTIVITY because it bothers you. I don’t like to gamble. I DON’T GO TO ATLANTIC CITY. Bars and smokers have walked hand in hand for hundreds of years. Whiney little window lickers like you have been around also. Look, it’s legal to grow tobacco, manufacture and sell it. It’s legal to smoke it. If you’re worried about getting sick, DONT DRINK EITHER. You choose do do that, don’t you? YOU FOOL. I’m sooo SICK of this inane debate. If you don’t want to suffer the reprocussions of second hand smoke, PARTY SOMEWHERE ELSE. Now that I think about it, why don’t we outlaw McDonalds and Burger King?? The products they’re selling to children and adults will cause more health problems in the long run — simply because little children do not smoke — but yet they eat that crap. EVERYONE SHUT THE HELL UP ALREADY and find something else to cry about. ENOUGH ALREADY.

“You cannot take away or prevent someone from engaging in a LEGAL ACTIVITY because it bothers you.”

Actually, you can’t have open containers in public but alcohol consumption (with certain exceptions) is legal. And the fact that it is a public area (as you said yourself) means that behaviors can be regulated in that space. Your best argument is that it is a private establishment that serves the public and therefore certain behaviors can occur.

And I would suggest finding another way to engage in debate than telling people to shut the hell up.

I don’t drink or smoke and rarely gamble and when I do it is token money (20 dollars). However, smoke bans for bars and casinos aren’t even good for health in the big picture because they are vice trades. Giving people who hate smoke incentives to drink booze or gamble their family finances is a lousy idea. If the smoke keeps them out, that is good for the lungs, the liver, the families and others who get effected by these things, etc. My arguments are not meant to be moral judgements (the bar or casino can be a fun thing for vice trades as intended by them) but merely to point out that those who want bans extended to vice trades so they can enjoy them have no health standing to complain because while they don’t want the smoke their activity does indeed harm others and the only people who rightfully have a healh argument are those who do not partake in vice trade activities.

If people would just take the time to look at the research that has been done on second hand smoke they would realize that the science says it is not harmful. When the surgeon general claims x number of people die per year from second hand smoke there is never a study cited. Why? Because there is no study to back it up.
People are not really concerned with their health when they push this legislation, they just don’t like the smell. My friends always complain about the smell of smoke in some bars but they NEVER talk about it affecting their health. Oh, by the way, it hasn’t stopped them from going to these places and staying for several hours, week after week.
We can’t let our govt. get involved in telling us what is good for us and what isn’t. To me that is the real issue here.

Spare me the “personal freedom” argument. You have more freedom than you know what to do with. Freedom to smoke most anywhere. Freedom to get falling down drunk. Freedom to eat fast food until your spleen erupts. The freedom to ride a motorcycle without a helmet, so that you can be as smart as an NFL quarterback and splatter your brains all over the highway, leaving your kids and wife fatherless.

You want freedom? You’ve got it.

If we went by your logic, David Lawrence and Mellon would never had helped raise Pittsburgh out of the 19th century and pushed for less pollution…because all the steel mills and coke plants “had the right” to pollute our air.

Smoking is a degrading, disgusting personal habit. You wanna do it? Fine. Just do it at home, not anywhere I am.

Pilt

caveat: I say, let the gamblers smoke and kill two birds with one stone….

Does anyone know when this issue will be voted on?

A smoking ban will be accepted in Pennsylvania in the near future. Other states are just begining to realize the reduction in health care costs, as a result of fewer individuals smoking. The individual rights part of this arguement has been sufficently covered, but please consider the health care aspect of this debate: A majority of smokers are in PA are under the state’s median income; these individuals are less likely to carry health insurance, and thus do not have access to quality affordable care. As a result, they use the emergency room, the most expensive heath care intervention point, when care is absolutely necessary. A smoking ban will decrease the number smokers and lower their cost for health insurance (and everyone elses for that matter since insured individuals cover the cost, thru higher premiums, for uncompensated care received by the uninsured), and therefore lower the level of smoking related heath problems which need a costly medical intervention on behalf of the state or federal govt. Yes, the state will lose cigerette tax revenues, but the cost savings will allievate any budgetary concerns.

I live in Maryland where the statewide smoking ban goes into effect in a few months. I read an article in the Baltimore Sun this weekend, apparently smokers account for only 20% of the population of the state. That 20% has been chosen by Governor O’Malley to cover the cost of the states huge deficit, a deficit that does not include health care. The proposed $2.00 additional tax on cigarettes will cover the cost of education (i.e. Teacher Salaries), as well as Maryland’s War on Drugs, and of course the states crime problems. Loosing that “Vice Tax” would be a major hit to the aforementioned funding.

Sure the revenue can be made up for by increasing gasoline tax, property tax, sales tax, etc … The sort of things the remaining 80% of the state would rather avoid. I agree that a smoking ban will decrease the number of smokers, but it will impact the bottom line, your pocket, and your ability to eat out in a smoke free bar!

I would be more than happy to pay the additional tax, if as little as 20% went towards health care. In all honesty when it comes to public health concerns in Baltimore, I worry more about being shot dead in the streets leaving a bar!

Huge Corporations that provide insurance to employers and their employees can use the “Smoking” Gun as an excuse to raise rates, they may also choose to blame America’s growing Obesity problem, which cause High Blood Pressure, Heart Attacks, Strokes and so on. Could we also consider the possibility of just good old fashioned Greed. Greed or health issue, rates will increase.

Twenty Percent of an estimated Six Million residents, and I don’t know how many Bars and Restaurants, Hmmm, I can count atleast 20 in a half mile stretch of road in Baltimore County. You do the math how many possible smokers are in any establishment at any given time, and your worried about second hand smoke? Ever sit in traffic on the Interstate with your windows down? How much better is that for your lungs? Worried about Health and your children, have you factored in the effects of greenhouse gases over the next 30 years?

Smoking ban must be acoss the board,ban in every public place and private club so no business will suffer,and then you will see all business will inprove Like new york after there ban

umm actually i know a good number of people who choose one restaurant over the other due to smoking policies. I live close to the ohio border who has the statewide non smoking policy and i know for a fact people have chosen to wait until we get back to PA to eat that way they can smoke. Also someone said people dont go out to smoke….this isnt true either i know several people who like to go to our local perkins just to sit there and smoke and talk with some friends…I think it should be the restaurants choice to permit smoking within their own establishment not the governments