I could point out in the case of whether a business owner that serves the public should have a choice that even if that argument you’re making is true, which I have severe doubts about from what I have heard others say and business around here claim about lost sales, it's also very irrelevant.
Even if those business owners are so wrong as to be to the point of being delusional, which they aren't, that still shouldn’t make a difference because it's a matter principle. If this was some factory, office, or a place where smoking has nothing to do with what the establishment does that's one thing for the safety of the workers among other things, but the argument where a person willingly going into a place that they knowingly, should know through common sense, or will shortly know anyhow has smoking as an integral part of the establishment is somehow being violated by smokers being there is what's really bogus. Nobody is pointing a gun at a customers head and forcing them to go to a bar or restaurant that has smoking. That is where your argument really starts falling apart. Sure people shouldn't be forced to breath tainted air...but they aren't.
Also the people that complain the employees will have to deal with it is almost the equivalent of trying eliminate stuntmen from movie sets or most physical professional contact sports because it's not safe even though the employees go in totally knowing what they are getting into. In fact if the potential customers don't like it they can go somewhere else. It's as simple as that. I don’t get what people can’t see about that. This is one of those instances where I'm perfectly fine letting the market decide what happens to the business.
I would also agree that if we have to pay for everybody's health then everybody's health is a vested concern for the community, BUT the right way to handle that is to give everybody their freedom of choice but also make them responsible for those bad choices when it's relatively clear what the outcome will be. It would be better to tell people they will get no help whatsoever and will face the full consequences themselves of something like smoking or some other stupid activity by getting no reimbursement for any health concerns they might have from smoking than to force everybody to live how somebody wants them using the feeble excuse that everybody will have to pay for it. (Especially when they choose thought their representatives for that to be the case in the first place.) That way everybody is covered unless they choose to something stupid, and everybody still has choice over what they do unless it forcefully effects others.
:cussing::ak47::clown:
