As of January 1st 2008 my home state of Illinois will ban smoking in public places.
I’m not even a smoker and I HATE laws like this and I hate the nanny state we are becoming. As a grown adult I don't need anyone to tell me to wear my seatbelt as my not wearing it affects no one but me (if one argue that it does affect others indirectly one opens the door for all sorts of scary legislation regarding health). In the same vein, a business owner should have the right to determine if his/her business should be smoke free or not. If that business is losing too many customers then maybe it should become a nonsmoking establishment (if that is why it’s losing business), but to have some government do-gooder strong arm it into doing so or else is retarded.
Another big problem with this is that it is based on questionable science. There has never been a reputable study that correlates second hand smoke and any sort of disease (the study done that showed second hand smoke kills 50,000 people a year was done by a guy that has his PhD in mechanical engineering). Gov Blagojevich says it saves lives. He says this because there have been reputable studies that show that the air near smokers has something like 50-100 times the amount of toxins that are not around smokers. This is still misleading because at this point it's a numbers game. I don't know the exact numbers but it works something like: there are 5 ppm (parts per million) of a certain carcinogen in the air normally, when you are around a smoker that number goes up to like 50 or 100, so they say that the air is dangerous and you are preventing deaths by removing it. That's a false conclusion though as levels that low still don't cause anything. The carcinogen does not get dangerous until something 5000 ppm. This is just another way for the government to exert some measure of control over its citizens’ everyday life.
Then there is the problem of government creep. Today you can't smoke in public, in 5 years you can't smoke within 200 yards of a doorway or window (already in effect in lots of places), 5 years after that you can't smoke in your house if you have kids, then pets, then at all. When they passed the seatbelt law for the first time the government (at least here in IL) said that they would never be able to pull you over for it, that it would just be an add on offense, no big deal we're saving lives!" and now as of last year you can be pulled over for it. We are about 10 years off of legislation that affects the way we eat and how much we exercise. Obesity is supposed to overtake smoking as the leading cause of preventable death in the next 2-3 years when that happens get ready for the ban on pizza and junk food, after all, it will “SAVE LIVES!!!”
At least this bill makes an exception for smoke shops (which I take to meaning any place that sells tobacco as it's main source of revenue) so cigar bars should still be ok, but I doubt they will be allowed to sell alcohol. Bottom line is this law takes away some of our freedoms and gives us nothing in return, that alone should be enough for people to be against it.
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