Now, here is my problem (s) with this entire situation and the smoking ban:
1. What about my rights to choose where I go? This is a private club that people pay dues for. What about their right to choose?
2. Second, if the city, county or state is going to continue to make laws restricting or outright banning smoking, they should not be able to collect tax revenues from the sale of tobacco products. If you are going to ban it, ban it. Make it illegal. Like prohibition (which is why an outright ban will NEVER happen - too much money involved for all parties).
Now, let's see how many comments we can get with this post...
Matt
I agree with you on the subject of choice, Matt. I see the real issue here is someone/group (government) telling me what I cannot choose do in my place of business conerning a product that is 100% perfectly legal in all 50 States.
ReplyDeleteJust as the MAC has obviously (and correctly) decided not to follow the rule someone else imposed concerning tobacco use in their building, I would find it most difficult to adhere to this law in our place of business.
However, even though we are not in an area in which any smoking bans of this kind exist (yet, anyway), we do not allow smoking in our front office. We choose to not allow smoking in our front office because the great majority of our clients do not smoke, and we simply do not want any of the majority of our clients finding our front office any more unpleasant than it likely already is (due to having to spend money on car/truck sevice). Also, I find the odor of non-cigar tobacco smoke quite unpleasant, I aleady get enough of it from an employee, so I don't want to put up with it from any more people than I have to all day at work.
I've got no problem with a business choosing to ban smoking in their building. It's their place, so they can make the rules as they see fit. If I don't like their rules, I simply choose not to patronize them and/or choose not to apply for employment with them.
That's an interesting thought on the gov't agency not being able to collect taxes on tobacco if they have imposed smoking bans, as well as the idea of making tobacco 100% illegal. Hell, making it illegal WOULD solve all of the related problems, really--just look at what outlawing heroine and meth has done.
I wonder when the gov't will start telling us what times during the day we can and cannot sell/purchase tobacco (just like booze).
Adam