More smoking ban hilarity
Now this is funny: Fines for violating Ohio’s smoking ban start at $100. Up in Ross County, they’re fining bars that are pretty renowned shitholes - the kind of place you joke with your friends about going, but wouldn’t dare get near. We’re talking hangouts for the hardcore, super-rough places that are always in the paper for fights and worse. Few of the patrons have any teeth; all of them have several tattoos; it’s anyone’s guess how many of them have jobs. That kind of place.
My questions:
Who exactly is rolling up to these places and expecting a pleasant, smoke-free environment?
Who exactly is served by restricting the smoking in these places?
How will it ever make financial sense for these places to enforce the ban? Most, if not all, of their customers want to smoke. The smart economic choice is to let them. A $100 fine here and there is no big deal compared to how much happy customers will spend.
Why are the smoking ban proponents such utter fascists?
I’m not a smoker and never have been, but I also have a couple of brain cells which allow me to reason that whether to enter a smoke-filled environment is my choice to make. Anyone who’s showing up at the likes of the Hiawatha Bar and getting outraged over the presence of smoke must have very little life to live, or a whole lot of control issues.
Filed under: Life
The description you give in the first paragraph sounds like the Travel Tavern where guests from the Jeremy Kyle show might be put up - or at least how I would imagine such a place to look…
New picture warnings to be put on cigarette packets in the UK here: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_pictures/6968580.stm
Jeremy Kyle! I love it that I’ve studiously avoided his show since its inception, yet know exactly the kind of people you’re talking about. Makes Jerry Springer’s or Trisha’s guests look positively posh in comparison.
And yes, I saw that about the pictures of dead bodies and so on. Haven’t they figured out yet that these macabre warnings just make smoking more appealing to impressionable kids? It’s like they’re on a recruitment drive.
Meanwhile, the grown-ups are so hooked they don’t care.
why are you calling proponents of a law that was passed by a majority of the electorate facists?
Because…they are. What else do you call extreme right-wing authoritarians who seek to control the personal choices of other, supposedly free human beings?
Jackie, I posted this response over at Living Out Loud blog as Larry had linked to this story.
I (being from the far country) was quite amused by Jackie’s quote:
…”the kind of place you joke with your friends about going, but wouldn’t dare get near. We’re talking hangouts for the hardcore, super-rough places that are always in the paper for fights and worse. Few of the patrons have any teeth; all of them have several tattoos; it’s anyone’s guess how many of them have jobs. That kind of place.”
It sounds just like what us hill folk say about Cincinnati.
PS, we do have dentists out here. Even I have each and every one of my teeth (so far) and no tatts (so far).
I think I’ll copy this post into her blog land.
Marilyn, you’ve misread my post if you think it’s about people from the country. Heck, I grew up in the country. I’m talking about a very specific clientele of a very specific sort of establishment. I thought I’d made that clear, but I guess not. My bad.
I still find it offensive to group people together into a despcription that may fit a new species of sub-humans. I am certain that they actually do work - perhaps making more money then you.
As far as the smoking ban, smoking does not just kill the people who are smoking. It has deadly consequences on those who are in its presence - including waitresses making minimum wage and have no choices either then to inhale.
Smoking also kills - figuratively and literally - the families and people who love the smokers. I buried my father whose addiction was Camels. Trust me - a piece of everyone who loved was also buried.
I enjoy going to restaurants and bars now - I can actually breathe and enjoy the atmosphere.
Rita, you seem to be under the impression that the law is there for you to revoke the freedoms of other human beings so that you may enjoy going to restaurants and bars. You are wrong, and offensively so.
As for smoking killing people…what exactly is your point? How does this relate to the law? What is your plan for banning fatty foods, alcohol, and cars?
In short, please go away and think about your beliefs until reason takes root.
Thank you, Jackie, for your intelligent and reasoned commentary. This topic rarely produces anything but emotionally charged babble.
While I wasn’t crazy with Jackie’s assessment of the people up here in my neck of the woods, I do agree with her assessment of the smoking ban.
The thing is, Marilyn, I’m not assigning any value judgement to those people. I think I’ve stuck to the facts of the sort of establishment and specific clientele I am talking about, but perhaps should have been more clear about the fact that I have no problem with such people. I just wouldn’t necessarily feel safe or welcome in a bar with them.