Ban Smoking in Public?

[Blood_Axis]

Yes, by all means, ban it everywhere public!!

I had been a smoker for 13 years (and I always used to ask before lighting one up) and now I realize how much the non-smokers suffer. Living in Greece, not only you are subjected to other people's smoke, but you get intimidated by smokers if you dare ask them put out their cigarette, or even to smoke it outside! :
They act as if it's their "god given right" to smoke and you're the weirdo who should f**k off.

[ladybright]

I really hate cigarette smoke and do not like cigar or pipe tobacco. However I object to the government telling people what they are allowed to do in private businesses. Any total bans that are larger than citywide really bug me. Citywide it is a local matter and hopefully democracy will work.

I am in favor of smoking not being allowed in hospitals, schools and government buildings. If people want to use private monies to have well ventalated smoking rooms in these facilities I am fine with that. In private businesses it is the owners option.

I dont go smoky places if I can avoid it and have a firm no smoking policy in my house. I will step out to the back porch with a guest any time of year to try to be hospitibile.

[Talan]

In Tony Harrison's modern interpretation of the Prometheus legend, the heat and light that the smoker conjures into being serves as a token of the human impulse to invention and ingenuity.

Source

[...] Agents choose 'public preferences' which are contrary to their 'private preferences' in order to attain 'reputational utility.' Such 'preference falsification' pushes, in turn, ideas away from private consciousness, originating 'knowledge falsification' (i.e., indoctrination).

Source

To be intellectual was to defy the body in favour of the mind, and smoking was merely an outward sign of that choice. [...] [we] smoke to bury [our] memories, then confront them; to demonstrate moral neutrality and then shift to radical hero ennobled by love.

Source

Jean-Paul Sartre smoked in public. The dominant framework for understanding mind in contemporary cognitive science evolved from existentialism. Ipso facto, this is reason for leaving the decision to the owner/operator of the building.

[Reid]

Controlling the odours that fill our streets is a matter of public interest. We can make an objective olfactory assessment that cigarette smoke is unpleasant, and therefore, without any social benefits to weigh against this, it should be banned. A simple matter with much legal precedent.

[SwordOfTheVistula]

Yes, I believe smoking should be banned in all public places. It's not my concern if people smke in private but in public I cannot stand the awful smell and smoke. It's poison.

Controlling the odours that fill our streets is a matter of public interest. We can make an objective olfactory assessment that cigarette smoke is unpleasant, and therefore, without any social benefits to weigh against this, it should be banned. A simple matter with much legal precedent.

So should we just arrest anyone who neglects to wear deodorant or brush their teeth? How bad can it possibly be if someone smokes out in the open? I don't think anyone has the right to walk around in public and expect to be enclosed in a virtual sphere into which nothing that offends them may be smelled, heard, or seen.

[Elysium]

If it was an ideal world than smoking, at all, would be banned. Smoking does nothing good for people and society, so why have it? Just because some people think it's cool or they're just addicted is even more of a reason to ban it.

But since it's not, I could settle with ban of smoking in heavily concentrated public areas.

[Sigurd]

It is kind of interesting how ex-smokers are often the most militant anti-smokers, worse than those non-smokers who have no smoking friends.

Anyway, here goes my own opinion. Now, now, I may be a smoker at present and it will sound a little like the stereotypical smoker's rant to some, but I even held exactly the same views on this during my 6-monthly intermezzo as a non-smoker.

I believe that it should be banned in government buildings and the likes, with a smoking area maybe provided outside and at the back, as well as maybe a secluded one inside for the Staff. If you go to a courtroom or a parliament session, you expect to be in a formal, cleanly and proper atmosphere.

Local public transport should be non-smoking, usually ventilation is bad, and surely no one can be so addicted as to not be able to withhold the urge to smoke for half an hour. Long-distance public transport should however cater for smokers: Trains should have two smoking compartments, one at either end, and as regards planes the air was actually healthier when smoking was still allowed, because paradoxically clean air would be pumped into the cabin more frequently, as the rate of ventilation obviously needs to be higher to deal with the smoke.

For other public places I propose a compromise: Pubs, restaurants and other venues who have only a single room, or an area of less than 75 square metres should be able to choose whether they want their entire premises to be either smoking or non-smoking.

Those places that have multiple rooms, or an area of more than 75 square metres, should be obliged to install one smoking and one non-smoking area... many cafes, pubs and restaurants have multiple rooms/lounges separated by staircases, hallways or other passageways that prevent the smoke from evading, especially here in the UK.

The final concern will surely be that of the Staff that work at the place, and their health. Now I see where one would be coming from in a country like Germany, or Austria, where your drinks are brought to your table more often than not, but I cannot see the issue in the UK, where you are expected to collect your drinks from the bar: If you have a bar room and a lounge room - why not have people collect their drinks, and maybe even food, from the bar room (which would sensibly be non-smoking) and then move on into the lounge room if they wish to smoke.

Either way, with about 35% of all adults smoking, I find it important that a compromise should be met, as there are obviously the smokers, the non-smokers who aren't bothered, and the non-smokers who are bothered...and all groups being relatively equal in numbers.

I have also heard the argument by the way that it will improve the atmosphere in a pub, and maybe even get people to stop smoking, and it will finally make everything cleaner? Oh, really? Ever since smoking was banned in enclosed public places here in Scotland:

• You are now able to smell the sweat and farts in a pub...surely not a pleasant smell either?
• It has made smoking social again. Friendships are made whilst smoking outside because you meet random people you would have never talked to otherwise. Also, if you are the only non-smoker out with a group of smokers, you are more or less bound to head outside with them or be left alone at a table. Many people start that way...and are still passive smoking either way, if they don't.
• Made everything cleaner? With the City Councils not seeing themselves responsible to clean sidewalks, a semi-blind person could tell where the entrances to pubs are: Cigarette buds all over the place that would otherwise have been deposed of in a

PS: And on a side note: If I walk down a busy road during rush hour for ten minutes I suppose I inhale more toxic smoke than by sitting in the smoking compartment of a train for an hour. So instead of bitching about how smoking inside adversely influences our health, people should rather look at the damage they are doing themselves by often driving cars that are anything but environmentally friendly.

[Beornulf]

I originally thought this thread was implying that smokers should only smoke on their own property, like it was some horrible drug or something.

Indoors it shouldn't be smoked. Children and such shouldn't inhale second hand smoke if they don't want to () designated zones are fine though.

I'm a smoker by the way, for now.

[Reid]

So should we just arrest anyone who neglects to wear deodorant or brush their teeth? How bad can it possibly be if someone smokes out in the open? I don't think anyone has the right to walk around in public and expect to be enclosed in a virtual sphere into which nothing that offends them may be smelled, heard, or seen.

Those are more complicated examples - some people have health-related problems in that regard, and it's hard to stop yourself from stinking after running, playing sports, etc. When it comes to cigarette smoke however, there's no such excuse. Smokers can chew nicontine gum in public if they really have to.

We might only want to ban it in denser parts of cities, as Elysium suggested. It's a bit of a ridiculous image to have someone sitting down on a hill in the countryside and not being able to light up. But again, part of the aim of such a law would be to get people to stop smoking in the first place.

[Galloglaich]

I voted to leave it up to the discretion of the property owner. We see more and more property rights whittled away as society "progressively" takes the plunge into nannyism. It's absurd. As far as actual public property (courtrooms, etc.) is concerned, I don't have a problem with prohibiting people from smoking indoors, as smokers are not theoretically the only people constituting the ownership of said property. Governmental micromanagement and loss of freedom will ruin our society long before second hand smoke ever will.

I'm not a smoker, BTW.