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You are assuming that all the smokers will stop gambling. Do you think that is true? Will they stop gambling altogether because they cannot sit at the slot machine and smoke, but have to go outside?
I don't think so.
The same sort of thing was said about pubbing over in the UK five years or so ago. The result of the total ban there? Pub closures soared from about 5 a week to a level of 52 per week.
Suzy, I know an excellent way for antismoking groups to get casino bans: If they and the lawmakers who vote for them are willing to sign legal documents covering the losses that they claim won't occur then the casinos would have no reason to oppose the bans anymore. To be fair, the guarantee should come proportionately out of the funds of the groups and the personal pocketbooks of the individuals involved, but hey, if they're telling the truth about their beliefs then they have nothing to fear and their bans will be passed quite quickly!
Think they'll do it?
Personally, I think they'll run faster than a little girl from a pack of tarantulas.
In terms of discrimination based upon religious preference or skin color, those are both well covered in the Constitution. At the moment, businesses are free to invite both smokers and nonsmokers to enter (and virtually all of them do so), but technically they could probably refuse permission to either if they wanted. After all, just look around the country at how the antismoking groups are encouraging employers to discriminate against hiring smokers!
The constitution has no provision barring a private establishment from discriminating against someone on the basis of race or religion. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution refers to the government.
The provisions barring a private establishment from discriminating against someone on the basis of race or religion is from the Civil Rights Act of 1965-an act of Congress.
1) I asked for a study and you offered one that you'd read only the Abstract for and which was not available on the net for the readers here to inspect unless they all wanted to lay down $30 each to purchase it. You've spent multi-posts justifying your choice of this study you haven't read and seem to be incapable of offering another in its place. That in and of itself says a lot about the paucity of real evidence out there supporting a need for these sorts of bans.
You keep harping on this. I feel no need to pay for the study. I am comfortable with the information available for free. I do note that you have not posted any links to a complete study that refutes the one in question. Do you have one?
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2) You have found a case where several workers were sickened to some degree by conditions in a tunnel filled with the pollution of thousands of cars and where the air is changed only once every 90 minutes. Somehow you are trying to argue that this shows that the "pollution" from a few cigarettes in a hotel room that you're not even in poses a danger to you, or that the "pollution" from a dozen or so people smoking in a bar with complete air changes every 3 to 5 minutes is more dangerous than the air in those car-filled tunnels with air changes every 90 minutes. I really don't know of any rational response to such a claim.
Hey, this is your tunnel, Michael. You brought it up. And now it is "only" an air change every 90 minutes? Your analogy fell apart. Sorry.
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3) You claim that "partial bans in sleeping areas of hotels do not work" because "smokers who want to smoke anywhere will do it." Again, I can't come up with a rational response.
There isn't one, is there?
As I just pointed out to Stillkit, part of the problem is that there are smokers who will smoke anywhere they want to, including in non-smoking areas.
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4) Instead of a proper study, you reference an unsigned blog entry about an unreferenced study carried out by an antismoking organization in Lebanon about tunnel air quality and dedicated water pipe smoking restaurants. The article, as is usual with these sorts of things, concentrates on a single emission, FPM 2.5, something that would generally be called "smoke," and finds that there can be more of it in a smoking den than in a car tunnel. Of course it doesn't examine anything ELSE that might be present -- because for all the other measurements the dedicated smoking restaurants in Lebanon would probably look just fine in the comparison. Oh, and to top it off, the article includes some of those wonderful pictures of lungs that are supposedly blackened on the OUTSIDE by people who generally inhale the smoke to those lungs' INSIDES. LOL! "Suzy," you do know I hope that antismoking educators like to use pig's lungs painted black for these sorts of things?
You were the one that compared air in restaurants to air in tunnels. The post was an observation, nothing more.
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5) And finally, Suzy seems to focus inordinately on a study done back before World War II that looked at smokers vs. nonsmokers: absolutely NOTHING of any relevance to a thread about someone smoking somewhere in another room in a hotel where any concerned nonsmoker might be staying. Surprisingly I didn't notice Katiana chiding Suzy for "deflecting," but that may be because Katiana is reading through the "mountain of studies" that would support hotel bans so she can offer them to us for analysis.
One can only hope.
The 1938 observation by Pearl was the first to link smoking and premature mortality. He was the one who got the ball rolling, though it took a while to prove that his observation was right on point.
If you can post about ventilation systems in bars and the Brooklyn Battery tunnel, I think I can post about the history of the science behind smoking bans.
"Azita Arvani recently returned from a trade show in Las Vegas, where she requested a nonsmoking room at her resort. It didn't matter.
"Smoke came in through the central air conditioning units," said Arvani, a Los Angeles technology consultant. "I usually don't have any problems with hotels and smoking. Except when I go to Las Vegas."
"Here's how smokers circumvent the rules: After checking in, they light up in their rooms and flush the evidence down the toilet. Then they phone the front desk to complain about the odor of cigarette smoke, and when an employee offers to move them, they decline, saying they've already unpacked. ..."
If there is a complete ban on smoking in a hotel, there is no smoke in the central air conditioning system, and the smoke-in-the-room-and-pretend-it wasn't-me scam won't work.
Of course, the last ploy also will not work if the hotel insists on moving the sneaky smoker and sends someone to help him.
Heh, Still, they call it "the level playing field," and it's been in the Antismokers' strategy books since at least the late 90s. The idea is to get partial bans that seem "reasonable" as "compromises," (e.g., bans in "family restaurants" where they can hold up the bugaboo of the dying children who are stuffing themselves with McWhoppers) and then, when those businesses start to suffer they can grab onto them as allies in pushing for wider bans.
It's a decent strategy, and hard to fight unless you stop them as early as possible. One of the give-aways that this is going on is when you start seeing press-released news articles where the owners of the banned places all start gushing about how their business has improved SOOO much since the ban was imposed on them. Now think about this and use your common sense for a moment: if you were one of those owners, and if you were telling the truth about this sudden business advantage you had, then would you REALLY want to see all your competitors also forced to ban smoking so that your new found customers could then start going to THEM instead of to your place?
Funny how that question never seems to come up in those articles, eh?
So the businesses owners are either lying, and their business did not improve, which could be shown by sales tax figures, or they should lie and say their business did not improve so they can fool their competitors? Which is it?
The constitution has no provision barring a private establishment from discriminating against someone on the basis of race or religion. The 14th Amendment of the Constitution refers to the government.
The provisions barring a private establishment from discriminating against someone on the basis of race or religion is from the Civil Rights Act of 1965-an act of Congress.
MTA, Yes, you are completely correct. My error. Heh, I try not to make 'em but hey, it happens. :>
Actually, gaming WAS banned in most places for many years because of that very concern. But, the states finally decided that potential tax revenues offset the threat of crime and legalized it. That's the same thinking which went into the end of prohibition and the states have been raking in the dough ever since.
Ultimately, the question comes down to whether or not prohibition (in this case, tobacco) is worth the rise in criminal activity and the loss of tax dollars.
It's called free market enterprise. Let the market decide. You do believe in free enterprise, don't you?
Providing a smoking or non-smoking environment IS a service and IS a factor in competition. Your post about casino's losing business illustrates that perfectly.
Suggesting that making every place non-smoking would be "helping" the business owners is a bit like saying the presence of the Gestapo lurking around the corner "helps" people obey the law.
And what's the next step after education doesn't work?
The difference between alcohol and tobacco is that it is possible to drink and not harm your health. A small intake of alcohol can have some benefits on the heart, for example. I am not advocating for making tobacco illegal.
When we come back to free market enterprise, we come back to the fact that the "free" is not an absolute concept. It is regulated in other ways.
When the impact of smoking bans on the hospitality industry is studied, the fears of loss of business are generally not supported. I'll google it for you, if you wish. Let us just say that even countries with stricter smoking laws than the US tourism can thrive.
I stand by my opinion that bans are pro-business.
If education does not work for obesity, we are in deep doodoo and we are going to see longevity numbers in the US drop. Can we please keep obesity out of the discussion? It is an annoying sidetrack.
I'm sure we all have, but the difference between you and I is that it would never occur to me to force that person to quit using it. Or, for that matter, to "help" them with their problem.
Life is full of minor annoyances which we USED to overlook in the interest of harmony and politeness. Why we can't do that now is a mystery to me, though I suspect it has more to do with hubris than with health.
What if you are an employer, the lady doused in perfume is the first person your customers meet, and the customers are complaining (not to mention your other employees). Do you say anything then?
That is actually what triggers most bans on fragrances.
I really do not see governmental bans on fragrances similar to the ones on SHS.
And the SHS issue is a health concern, not just annoyance at the smell.
47 states still allow smoking in hotel rooms. I think Vermont has also banned it.
So in every state beside MI, WI and VT, it is the responsibility of the anti-smoking zealots to avoid hotels that allow smoking. Which is the way it should be.
These bans are over-reaching and will be reversed eventually.
Then non-smokers won't be safe anywhere. That will truly be the time to become hysterical.
Ok. In places with just one hotel, let's say they can be forced to be non-smoking. What about places with more than one? Would allowing one to be non-smoking and the other to be smoking be alright with you?
Since there are more non-smokers than smokers, do you think the smoking hotel could stay in business?
Aside from that, no business has a "right" to poison its customers, even if it is perfectly fine with the customers to be poisoned.
When the impact of smoking bans on the hospitality industry is studied, the fears of loss of business are generally not supported.
Whether the above statement is true or not true isn't the issue.
The issue is that government shouldn't be able to tell a hotel owner how to run their business.
If a hotel voluntarily goes no-smoking ...... fine.
Otherwise, the Left should quit shoving their agendas down everyone elses throat.
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