Smoking Ban

On November 7, 2006, Ohio voters supported Issue 5 backed by 575 businesses, churches, and health groups in. This was absolutely an astounding accomplishment for a smoke free Ohio and a historic step towards improving the health of Ohioans. The smoke free Ohio law went into effect December 7th of 2006. However, citations cannot be written and fines cannot be levied until the rules of enforcement are finalized by the Ohio Department of Health. The government and health department still expects businesses to follow the law. With this they mean no ashtrays, no smoking signs must be posted and absolutely no smoking. Private clubs, which are non-profit organizations with no employees, located in freestanding buildings and do not share space with any other entities are exempt from the indoor smoking ban. On May 1st 2007, the law was finalized and able to be enforced. Smoking is not permitted on an outdoor patio, unless smoke cannot get into the building. A place that does not qualify as a public place or place of employment, including an outdoor area, could be declared nonsmoking by the owner, manager, operator, or other person in charge or control.

To me smoking is the world's dirtiest habit. There's just something about sticking tobacco rolled up in paper in your mouth and lighting it up for smoke to fill your lungs to calm your nerves that just doesn't seem appealing to me. Everything about this habit is dirty and harmful to the smoker and everyone around them. The biggest issue at hand is the health problems tobacco smoke causes. All the health issues prove that something needs to be done about public smoking. Every year cigarette smoke kills more people than AIDS, alcohol, car accidents, suicides, illegal drugs and fires combined. Smoking related diseases claim approximately 438,000 American lives each year with 167 billion dollars a year in health care costs. 3,000 of those 430,000 lives were from lung cancer (American Lung Association).All of these lives were claimed because of second hand smoke involuntarily inhaled by non-smokers. Smoking is still one of the most popular habits in today's society. Even when knowing all the statistics, millions of people light up a cigarette everyday knowing the consequences of the harm it does to a person's body. Most of these smokers feel their rights are being violated by the smoking ban. So, by that they are telling me non-smokers rights should be violated and their health should be at risk. All of that just for harmful chemicals to fill their lungs and give them that sigh of relief.

"In 2004, an estimated 20.9% (44.5 million) of the U.S. adults were current smokers; of these, 81.3% (36.1 million) smoked every day, and 18.7 (18.3 million) smoked some days" (MMWR). This is similar to the wise adage, "Eat poop. Billions of flies can't be wrong!" I am happy to say that I am not one of those 44.5 million people who smoke. Nor, am I one of those people who will be raising cane when they get kicked out of a bar and fined 100 dollars for smoking. The public smoking ban is a positive step for protecting the non-smokers from harmful second-hand smoke but, it is also a little far fetched. A smoking ban from family restaurants is a great idea to protect the innocent youngsters, but to ban it from all bars and bar and grills is a little ridiculous.

This smoking ban has got way out of hand. The smoking ban is a great idea in restaurants which is one of the only things the government has done right for a change. Families with small children go to family restaurants to have a peaceful dinner. Parents shouldn't want their innocent children exposed to something so unhealthy at such a young age. But smoking ban in bars? Come on, what was the government thinking here? Bars are where adults go to drink, socialize and most to smoke. Parents do not bring their youngsters to a place with an atmosphere like that at that late of a night. If any parent does then child services should be called about unfit parents. Then if you put two and two together you see smoking bans in bars would cause a lot of anger that police would then have to deal with. Let's see here, you got an intoxicated smoker getting kicked out of a bar for smoking a legal substance and fined one-hundred dollars. Then the bar tender will have one pissed off intoxicated person who can't have their smoke to calm their nerves.

Then the next problem with the smoking ban is if you let smoking allowed in bars and not restaurants, where does bar and grills fit in to play here? Families bring their children to places like Buffalo Wild Wings for example, for lunch or dinner. But then if you really think about it, they only come out in those hours. This is why I propose a law that bans smoking from restaurants such as this for only a certain period of time. A smoking ban while the family crowd is out and about in the daytime and evening, but let people smoke when it's later and sports are on when the party crowd appears late at night.

If the government was really considering both the rights of the smokers and non-smokers, they could cut restaurants in half. More or less, if you will, create segregation. Have a smoking and non-smoking building. I'm not saying go back to how it was and have a sign distinguishing smoking and non-smoking areas, but an actual wall and door dividing up the smoking and non-smoking areas. That way both sides of the controversy have their rights.

All I ever seem to hear from smokers are complaints about the smoking ban violating their rights. The government doesn't see it that way. They see a non-smoker unwillingly inhaling smoke from smoker's cigarettes. Second hand smoke is just as bad as smoking, so are the smokers just saying the non- smoker shouldn't have rights just so the smoker can inhale some unhealthy smoky nicotine? Smoker's don't care that nicotine is an addictive chemical that is also one of the 66 known cancer causing agents do they? But wait, if you think that's great, it just