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Old 06-30-2005, 09:11 PM
sugar and spice sugar and spice is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2002
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Quote:
Originally posted by valkyrie
It really should be up to the owners, and then people can choose where to go.
The problem here is that while some of the owners would love to ban smoking in their bars, they know they will lose out on business if they do so because their smoking patrons only have to go down the block to another bar. That's why these particular owners have been supporting the smoking ban, because they know that in this case someone will have to go out of town in order to smoke -- and let's face it, most people will go an extra block, but they won't go an extra 20 miles. It's wishful thinking to imagine that banning smoking would happen on anything less than an all-or-nothing level.

It would be interesting to know the percentage of bar owners who would outlaw smoking in their bars if it wouldn't affect business, though. I have no clue if that percentage would be large or small.

On the whole, I think it's a lot of excitement over nothing. There are plenty of people who smoke now who are bitching about how they won't go out to the bars after this, or they'll go out of town to do it -- but they won't. They all said the same thing when the restaurant ban went into effect, and they still go to all those restaurants. And there are a lot of non-smokers who claim that they'll go out a lot more often now, but honestly I doubt that'll happen either. I don't think it's going to cause a significant change either way.
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