Ban on Smoking in Outdoor Dining Areas Held for 45 Days

How about a ban on selling cigarettes Downtown?? I'm sick of people picking on smokers and giving stores and companies a free pass! Let's see if you can get that one passed... Believe it or not, you won't actually stop people from smoking by making them outcasts and social pariahs. I'm an ex-smoker and I enjoy smoke-free restaurants (I did as a smoker as well), but enough is enough. There are plenty of smoke-free restaurants and clubs. If you don't like the atmosphere in one place, go somewhere else. It's called free choice, people. If not, pick your battles and go after the real bad guys in this story.

If smoking were a self-contained activity, i.e. no one ever had to deal with a smoker's smoke / cigarette butts / matches / burns, the rules would be different. Sure, I find smoking nauseating to both watch and smell (to the point where I would would automatically not date a smoker), but I don't want to smell it when I'm eating food. Equally as bad is sitting at a table where there's a dirty ashtray (or ashtray, period.)

Nor do I want to step into and out of a building and have to smell it and wear it on my clothes. I remember seeing a smoking area at an airport in Holland. it was a glass room, filled with smokers. You could barely seem them through the haze. I respected both their addiction and the airport's accommodation of their addiction, and was more than grateful that smoking was completely banned in other areas of the airport, including outside the entrances.

I have no sympathy for the needs of smokers and absolutely support the ban.

I take it from your comments, Little Tolerance, that you would then logically support a total ban on tobacco sales as well as banning activities related to smoking?

Not at all. Why ban the sale of cigarettes? Smoking keeps our medical industry funded and is a source of revenue for highway repair. Banning that knife store on Broadway isn't going to stop knife-related murders. Prohibition didn't stop alcohol sales or drinking, either.

Also, the ban prevents no one from smoking at home, in their cars, or standing atop a bridge, overlooking the LA River. Smoking is quite similar to porn. Most people don't want around when they're eating in a restaurant, as it's lingering effects can take away from the taste of the food. But sales of it should and will continue so that we can all enjoy it without offending others.

So, we need tobacco funding to keep the medical industry propped up? Now there's a sensible argument. Extend it a little bit further and we can sell crack, tax it, and be able to finally fill the potholes that plague our streets. How about we don't take Big Tobacco's money and butt out of private citizens' business, porn or otherwise? If not, how about a fat tax? Fat people make my healthcare premiums go up. Can we force them to exercise until they get thin? We should focus on ways to help people quit smoking/lose weight rather than harassing them. I think these types of bans are counter-productive.

Your argument seems more Big Brother than the ban. People are going to engage in their vice / kink / area of interest. That's not the question.

Sorry your health premium is higher than you think because of fatsos. But by the same token, no, we can't ask the old to "try being younger." We also can't expect the mentally challenged to "act a little less retarded," just so your Blue Cross bill is lower.

If cigarette smoke only went INTO the body and not OUT FROM the body, there would be nary an issue. If someone enjoys smoking, I applaud them. Smoke! But... I don't want your reeking Newport Menthol to intrude on my pulled pork sandwich. Nor do I want to see a disgusting ashtray and butts on the ground as I walk into a restaurant.

I was being sarcastic, but thank you for allowing me to have a different opinion.