Secondhand smoke concerns

Charles Young said:Regarding people actually paying fines... nobody would ever pay them.$167 They’d honestly rather go to jail or do community service.
Prisons are already packed with traffic offenders, and if this ban actually happened, the system would just collapse. From what I hear, there are 80k people waiting to serve time for minor stuff. Now, multiply that by five, and you get an idea of how many people will be caught smoking at bars or clubs over the weekend. Seriously, there wouldn't be room in any US prison for anyone except smokers (lol?). Then people would start speeding everywhere to avoid getting caught, leading to more accidents because they know their court date isn't for another ten years.

Nobody said this would be fixed overnight. We need new prisons regardless of this law. So, we should be building them right now just to handle the current situation.

Charles Young said:Smoking gives me pleasure, so when you say it provides nothing, you need to respect my personal enjoyment.[/B]

Madness:

I respect your enjoyment, so please respect my decision to stay away from smoke, whether active or passive.

Quote:

Charles Young says: [B]In bars and clubs... don't you realize how many spots there are in a city like this? You can't regulate that legally. You'd need millions of honest cops out there enforcing it (see 😁 above). It's simply never going to happen here, and even if it does, it'll just be a dead letter on a page. You don't need a million cops; you just need inspectors circling the bars. If you catch someone smoking, you fine both the smoker and the manager—there's nothing better than peer pressure to get things done. Problem solved, and hey, new jobs created. Anyway, we're here to talk about health, not law enforcement. What I want to know is why smokers don't feel any guilt toward non-smokers—like a parent smoking right next to their own kids?

dustycanyon6 said:I have to jump in here because some of these posts are totally missing the point—looking at you, Charles Young. We’ve touched on this before, but it's worth repeating.

Everyone deserves equal rights and freedoms. Part of that is the right not to be poisoned against your will. My freedom ends where yours begins. If you think about it, smoking in a non-smoking area (or even just around others) is unethical because you're infringing on their space and health. The law might not strictly forbid it everywhere yet, but that doesn't make it okay. Just because something isn't illegal doesn't mean it's right. If there were any real justice in this world, smoking wouldn't be allowed in public spaces, or we'd have properly separated areas for smokers and non-smokers.

And I'll say it again: this isn't about banning smoking. It's about not allowing people to infringe on the freedom of non-smokers. By restricting smoking in public spaces, we actually gain more freedom in America—it makes us a slightly more democratic and free society than we are now.

I hope people see the distinction between a ban and simply not allowing something. Signs should really say "Smoking is not permitted" instead of "Smoking is prohibited," because the default state should be no smoking in public. Some people just need things spelled out explicitly. It's like the whole debate over marijuana—we aren't talking about legalization, we're talking about decriminalization.

Yep, I'm with you on this. 👍