Illinois Smoking Ban

[KSig RC]

Originally Posted by 33girl

It's not rocket science to know who your clientele is and what will piss them off.

This may be true (or also may not be), but it really has no effect on the overall 'market force' argument - it's simply not explicitly true to say that, if most people wanted bars to be smoke-free, they would already be smoke free.

There's no doubt your iron workers' local hang-out will be adversely affected, but that's not really relevant to the point I was making.

When I say "realize potential" for what would happen w/out smoking, I mean it in the sense that almost no bar owners have any reliable way to measure the effects of going to a non-smoking establishment, and as such the 'market' (as it were) can't really drive that way. You provide two exceptionally extreme examples, and even there only the iron workers example gives much surety.

Originally Posted by Tom Earp

How many thousands of people will lose their jobs and how in the hell do they pay for living?

Da, sorry dumb asses, YOU!

Don't you think this amount might be, y'know, offset by:

a.) the fact that smoking will still occur, just not in bars or restaurants (see: smoking in NYC and Boston has not exactly ended)
b.) lowered public burden for smoking-related illnesses, especially in non-smokers or children of smokers?

Seriously, there's more to this argument than some nebulous economic hit to "the industry" or your store, Tommy - people die.

[33girl]

Originally Posted by KSig RC

This may be true (or also may not be), but it really has no effect on the overall 'market force' argument - it's simply not explicitly true to say that, if most people wanted bars to be smoke-free, they would already be smoke free.

There's no doubt your iron workers' local hang-out will be adversely affected, but that's not really relevant to the point I was making.

When I say "realize potential" for what would happen w/out smoking, I mean it in the sense that almost no bar owners have any reliable way to measure the effects of going to a non-smoking establishment, and as such the 'market' (as it were) can't really drive that way. You provide two exceptionally extreme examples, and even there only the iron workers example gives much surety.

The issue I had when this came up in Pgh were all the people saying "OMG I will SO go out to bars all the time when the smoking ban comes along." For some people that's true, but for a lot of people, not so much. Once the ban is passed, they'll say they don't go out because of parking, or because it's too expensive, or because of the music, or blah blah blah.

A lot of people are just big party poopers, and like to blame their lameness on things that aren't their fault.

Heroin and other such drugs weren't always illegal - they lost their legal status when it was shown that their negatives were greater than their positives. If tobacco is such a horrible drug, why hasn't it become illegal as well? (Yes I know - tobacco lobby blah blah blah.) You can't demonize something and continue to profit from it.