Minnesota has now become the 20th state to adopt the ban on smoking in public places such as restaurants and clubs (non privately owned I presume, like it is here in Ohio).  This is just the latest state in the US to follow an increasing trend in anti smoking campaigning, that some feel will hurt business, and some feel is an overwhelming issue of public health and safety at any cost, regardless of how it affects bar or restaurant business.

Here in Ohio, the smoking ban was recently passed as well, and although it was met with a lot of initial resistence, I think people have already become accustomed to it when they go out to restaurants.  Now, instead of being asked if you want to sit in smoking or nonsmoking, you’re simply asked how many are in your party and led to a nonsmoking table, which is all restaurants have now.

For smokers, this has really ticked them off, but nonsmokers are all too happy to accept the fact that the world is a changing place and there are obviously some larger powers at work lobbying to eliminate smoking all together one day.  When do I think this goes too far?  When they start to tell us that we are not even allowed to smoke in our own cars, which believe it or not, is already the law in some states.

I am actually personally glad to see smoking go in public places, but I do feel bad for my smoking friends, and I don’t necesarily agree that smoking should be banned in all bars, because drinking and smoking go hand in hand for a lot of people, even people who are not habitual smokers.  Maybe they could have smoking areas in bars? I don’t know, I guess in this case it’s an all or nothing. 

I guess if anything else, the government is forcing smokers to smoke less and maybe even prompting some people to quit smoking all together since they cannot really do it socially in restaurants and bars.  Herbal smoking cessation may be a lot more popular now!

This entry was posted on Friday, May 18th, 2007 at 10:33 am and is filed under Smoking Cessation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.