While supporters are lamenting (angrily, in some cases) that the state senate has “gutted” a statewide smoking ban to only cover restaurants — excluding bowling alleys, bars, and bingo parlors — given that I visit very few of the latter and quite a few of the former, I’ll be pleased to see the bill pass. Assuming that the folks who will only settle (for the moment) for it applying everywhere don’t end up scuttling it.
Frankly, I’ll confess that this is an area where my relatively libertarian views of governemental regulation fall by the wayside — and I’ll not pretend that the “protecting the workers” excuse is my motivator. I don’t like being in restaurants that allow smoking. I dislike the “smoking or non-” question when I walk in. Screw it. Forbid it in restaurants, and I’ll be a happy camper, philosophical consistency or not.
Yes…It’ll be wonderful to be able to go to restuarants out side of Boulder and not have to deal with smoking anymore.
For me, the Liberal, it comes down to smoking violating the “ends at my nose” rule. I would be perfectly fine with smokeless tabacco, but I don’t want to be smelling it.
In boulder it is also smokeless in bars…Business has of course increased because of this for the bars. Most of them have large sealed smoking rooms for those that want to smoke.
I dunno, it sounds awfully sensible for a legislative body to have thought of it without help. There’s probably a catch.
The catch is that the bill has died a horrible, hacking death …