Restaurants okay with smoking ban

Great question. I don't know the answer.

I'm guessing that in such a contest the employer would argue, "they don't have to work here" ... akin to saying "let the employee beware."

Are there legal decisions involving non-smoking plaintiffs suing their employers for damages suffered due to smoking in the workplace?

It seems to me this is a workplace hazard similar to others faced by employees, and the use of the judicial system will result in a marketplace that accounts for the inherent risk of workplaces that allow smoking, not unlike the premiums paid to a variety of occupations.

Should a court decide that allowing smoking in a workplace has detectably deleterious effects on the health of that sector's employees, then the employers are able to choose to a) compensate employees for the riskiness of the occupation (and adopt a new business model), or b) lower the amount of risk in the occupation.

At least in this case the property owner retains the ability to exercise control over their assets, a superior alternative to legislation led on Jones St.

Watch for the tobacco industry, through their hack legislators, to try to kill this bill by inserting just such an exemption for private clubs. The tobacco industry will stop at NOTHING to make sure that its deadly product continues to be accessible in as many public places as possible -- no matter how unhealthy it is for other Americans. They know that if Americans can't smoke everywhere they go, people will start to quit, or just smoke fewer cigarettes each day -- and the tobacco companies' profits from their deadly, disgusting, addictive produce will decline.

It's all so confusing. I thought we were raising the sin taxes which include smoking. And now we are not got to let these sinners smoke in a restaurant. Looks like the more they smoke the more money we will make from sin. The wages of sin is death, not a no smoking restaurant.

in communities with few jobs, people who don't smoke but get stuck in jobs in smoking-friendly establishments, people who find themselves with lung cancer ten years later and end up in medical bankruptcy. But maybe that's good because the magic free-market will scarf up their assets and everything will trickle down, like it always does.

J

PS Were it not for workers, I'd go along with your position 100%. Of course, were it not for workers, business owners who are happy to allow smoking wouldn't be business owners.

There can't be too many issues on which Hillary, Huckabee, Hitler, Castro, the old Soviet Union, and al Qaeda are in agreement. Who could stand against such international unity? Phooey on those people who believe that business owners have the right to decide for themselves whether they wish to serve smokers, and phooey on the people who believe in individual rights, property rights, and freedom of association.

Any tax exempt political action committee (charity) that, instead of educating, their primary function, spends huge sums of money to hire lobbyists to make laws using THREATS, INTIMIDITATION, LAW ENFORCEMENT, and SNITCHING to FORCE people to OBEY their guidelines will get NO DONATIONS from me. Here they are, all fed by big pharma through their Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf

These ban lobbyists are masters of deceit. They don't use the word "bars". If you ask most bar patrons, most will go along with smoke free restaurants, where you eat, then leave. None of them, even non smokers like myself, want to ban smoking in bars. Here in Chicago, there are many problems for neighbors and police in front of the bars that comply with the year old Illinois ban. No one is complaining about patrons peacefully smoking in the bars ignoring the ban.

How are Democrats going to collect all the tax money they need to throw away if everyone quits smoking. I don't smoke. I can't stand being around it. I believe it is dangerous to the smoker's health, and also to those who are exposed. What I don't understand is if smoking is so deadly, why doesn't the gevernment outlaw it? The SCHIP law was just recently passed with a substantial cigarette tax increase. So if smokers cut back, taxes will have to be increased to make up the loss in revenue. Democrats are fun to watch. The sad part is the price we have to pay for watching. The Democrat Party believes that all money belongs to the government. I believe money belongs to the people or companies who earn it.

If someone insists on smoking while you're eating, just cough all over their food and drinks and see how they like it when others inflict nasty habbits upon them.

Smoking is for losers, period.

Why stop with smoking, let's ban drinking alcohol in food establishments since drunk driving leads to so many deaths and disability.

I believe that the title of your post is misleading.

Restaurateurs who would like to serve the smoking public are not in favor of a smoking ban.