I need to clarify my position on this matter before I go into details. As much as I see myself as social democratic and such, I really hate when government gets involved in people’s private lives, and that includes the lives they carry on at their private business establishments. I really dispise the idea of a nanny state. If a person (or consenting adults) want to do whatever they want to do with themselves, that is their choice and free-will and the government has no right or responsibility to stop them. The government should be allowed to improve the lives of its citizenry by working with a larger pool of funds than would be possible for any one organization or person to guarantee a basic standard of living and safety. However, the government should not be legislating laws that prevent a person from doing whatever they want to themselves as long as it does not harm other people. (Or doing whatever they want in their business establishment as long as it involves consenting adults.) If, as in Canada, costs are born by the government due to those actions, then the actions should be duly taxed to compensate for those costs, and not banned.
Okay, now onto what I am getting at. Calgary, one of the few places left where bars are allowed to decide for themselves whether to allow smoking or not, has decided to push forward its ban on smoking in public places. Now, I do not support smoking and I do not believe that people who smoke heavily are doing anything positive. I smoke cloves once in a blue moon, but that is about it. However, I feel that a business should be allowed to decide for itself whether or not to allow smoking in its establishment. If there was sincerely a serious problem with smoking, the businesses would be losing income and would ban it outright themselves. I do not think there is any reason for the government to be telling private enterprises how to run their businesses just because a bunch of lobbyists think they should. At the very most the government should legislate that all public places need to have a non-smoking section, but banning smoking outright is just another example of a nanny state, and something I think a mature society needs to move away from.
People are stopping smoking on their own, and eventually bars will discover that having smoking areas or patios will attract more customers (and lower costs for smoke damage, etc) without having to have the government force them to do so.
This is particularly irritating because as much as I hate smoking and I enjoy a smoke-free bar. I do not like the idea of government encroachment into private spaces of any sort. Anyone who goes to a smoky bar is making the decision themselves to expose themselves to the smoke, and does not need a nanny-state to take their hands through life.
grr.
edit: This is my brain on Blog has some circumstantial evidence of the damage to diversity in culture and such this mentality can really cause. 
…..1337hax0r…..
