Smokers are a minority of the population, but form a majority of bar patrons. The two habits tend to be positively correlated with eachother. Smoking is a social habit (frequently acquired socially, reinforced socially, and the shared experience of smoke breaks tends to encourage social behaviour); bars, similarly, are for when you want to get drunk with other people.
The concern is a private property issue, but the bar owners will naturally do what the market tells them. The fact is, even with smoking decreasing, the solid core of bar patrons continues to be tobacco users.
The people advocating for these laws, on the other hand, almost never go to bars. The smoke isn’t affecting them (not two thirds of them, anyhow), and it’s basically a political manouever to push people around—demonize smokers as The Other, and you’ll win votes.
If there actually were a meaningful cohort of people desirous of non-smoking bars, then you wouldn’t need a law—you’d already have them.
And honestly man, banning smoking has seriously impacted the bar scene. You just don’t get the same quality of people in them anymore.
Just for clarification, I’m solely talking about bars, not government buildings, airports, or other common areas; someone’s attendance at the bar is optional. If you’re going to ban smoking there, then you can use the same logic to ban smoking in private homes—because it might harm visitors.
For what it’s worth, the argument I’d heard—not that I agree with it, to be clear—was that visitors/patrons weren’t the issue: the law was designed to essentially extend safe-work-environment laws to bars. Thus, it was the employees who were the at-risk party.
I wish that the law had been written in line with other hazardous materials laws. Then there would be (very expensive) smoking bars in which the staff wore full-on hazmat suits at any time that they might be exposed to the hazardous smoke, and so forth.
EDIT: to be clear, I mean this seriously, not as a joke about smoking laws.
In Canada? Here in Vancouver it is illegal to smoke within 6m of doorways, windows or air intakes of any building. It is hard to see how that level of restriction can be attributed to a work safety motivation.
“We are pleased that the City of Vancouver is taking a leadership role in efforts to reduce tobacco use and protect its citizens from the deadly effects of second-hand smoke. We are encouraging other municipalities within our jurisdiction to adopt these same by-laws,” said Domenic Losito, regional director of Environmental Health for VCH.
Allow me to clarify:
Smokers are a minority of the population, but form a majority of bar patrons. The two habits tend to be positively correlated with eachother. Smoking is a social habit (frequently acquired socially, reinforced socially, and the shared experience of smoke breaks tends to encourage social behaviour); bars, similarly, are for when you want to get drunk with other people.
The concern is a private property issue, but the bar owners will naturally do what the market tells them. The fact is, even with smoking decreasing, the solid core of bar patrons continues to be tobacco users.
The people advocating for these laws, on the other hand, almost never go to bars. The smoke isn’t affecting them (not two thirds of them, anyhow), and it’s basically a political manouever to push people around—demonize smokers as The Other, and you’ll win votes.
If there actually were a meaningful cohort of people desirous of non-smoking bars, then you wouldn’t need a law—you’d already have them.
And honestly man, banning smoking has seriously impacted the bar scene. You just don’t get the same quality of people in them anymore.
Just for clarification, I’m solely talking about bars, not government buildings, airports, or other common areas; someone’s attendance at the bar is optional. If you’re going to ban smoking there, then you can use the same logic to ban smoking in private homes—because it might harm visitors.
For what it’s worth, the argument I’d heard—not that I agree with it, to be clear—was that visitors/patrons weren’t the issue: the law was designed to essentially extend safe-work-environment laws to bars. Thus, it was the employees who were the at-risk party.
I wish that the law had been written in line with other hazardous materials laws. Then there would be (very expensive) smoking bars in which the staff wore full-on hazmat suits at any time that they might be exposed to the hazardous smoke, and so forth.
EDIT: to be clear, I mean this seriously, not as a joke about smoking laws.
In Canada? Here in Vancouver it is illegal to smoke within 6m of doorways, windows or air intakes of any building. It is hard to see how that level of restriction can be attributed to a work safety motivation.
I’d heard it re: the smoking bans implemented in Minneapolis; I’m not surprised that Canada takes an especially paternalist position on the matter.
Also, more than votes are gained when demonizing smokers—there are also the smokers’ tax dollars.
Brother, you don’t even want to know what we’re paying each day up here in Soviet Canuckistan.
sigh And they call the LOTTERY a stealth tax on the poor...