Boo on Feb 12, 2008 5:50 am

I love the common snowball-effect argument from the peanut gallery paranoids.

"Waaaahhh you're taking away my right to smoke! What's next, my right to take insulin?" Yeah that makes sense, moron. Just like the flip side of the coin....

"You're allowed to breathe smoke into my face with your "rights". What's next, you have the right to shoot me up with heroine?"

Get an education. No one is invading your right to smoke. Smoke to your heart's content, just don't invade others right to breathe clean air. And enclosed smoking sections work just about as well as a special section in a public pool for peeing would.

I work in a bar/restaurant with a smoking ban, and it's bustling. The smokers have their own walled-off area that is outside with an uncovered roof. Yeah, they're outside, but only feet away from their tables. They aren't anywhere near the bar, and I'm glad for it. I've been working for seven years as an asthmatic bartender because of it. My patrons are happy and I've never had to encounter unsafe work conditions.

RCharles on Dec 30, 2007 9:19 am

At the rate the cretins in Harrisburg legislature are moving, PA will be the last place on earth without a smoking ban in public places.

Ireland and England did it; entire countries. France has a ban effective on 1/1/2008 as does Illinois.

I find smoking in public, especially in bars and restaurants when I am tring to enjoy a meal, an invasion of my right to breath air that is free of smoke. (Granted, it should be free of all polutants; let's start with cigarette smoke.)

But the major motivator is the cost of health care. States realize that all the folks who get smoking related illnesses are a major expense to the state. Rather than sue the tobacco companies to pay the bills, it is far better to deter the smoking up front.

I moved to PA from NJ but I'm near the Delaware and go back for meals out whenever I can.

R CHarles

Ray on Jun 28, 2007 9:37 am

Banning smoking in public inside places like the work place and other places where you have no option to leave is fair, but to ban it in a Bar or other place where it is an option to stay or leave is an unfair and illegal infringement of the other people's rights to smoke. If you don't like it in those places then leave, it's your right.

In restaurants I feel it is ignorant to smoke anyway. You may have finished your meal but others are still eating.
It is also possible to install smoke eating devices in the smoking areas to reduce the amount of smoke. Make that the law.

Next you will want to ban sex if it is not protected. Remember unsafe sex kills too. WHERE DOES IT STOP??????????

What if I told you that looking at ugly people causes stress and then show that stress kills, will we have to lock up all the ugly people to preserve the right of the non ugly people to live stress free? And who then chooses who is ugly?

Everyone of us knows someone who smoked their whole life and died of old age. So why do you ignorant people believe the slanted (facts) that second hand smoke kills. Those people who died of cancer and just happened to have exposed to second hand smoke would have died of cancer anyway. They are just more susceptible to the disease than others.

We have more serious problems that our representives should be spending OUR time on.

casha on Jun 27, 2007 3:44 pm

What about my right to healthy living? Smokers choose to smoke and use filtered smokes but I, who choose not to smoke must suffer through smoke without the benefit of a filter. An activity should not impose on peolenot involved in the activity

Teresa on Jun 22, 2007 10:52 am

This whole smoking ban is crap! Does the government have no one else to bother? Once they've made the whole country "smoke free" what's next telling fat people they can eat at McDonalds? I always thought that the whole point of being American was the freedom to make your own individual choice not having your choices made for you by a bunch of yuppy law makers looking to get their names on the news.