Weclock: stop bein' so sensitive ya pussy. I'm not going to tell you to stop eating, or to stop fuckin' around, so don't you make a law tellin' me where I can and cannot smoke. if I'm in a bar, and the owner of the bar says, here's an ashtray, go ahead and smoke, then god fuck it why can't I smoke?
Because smoking has the proven externality of negatively affecting the health of the people around the smoker. And in addition to the bar owner and other customers there are also the other workers who are affected, and keeping one's source of income unfortunately affects what people can be forced to tolerate pretty strongly. We have safety regulations in most industries precisely because of that, and I'm pretty sure that the concentrations of chemicals in tobacco smoke in a bar environment, while obviously not in the IDLH range, do exceed the OSHA permissible exposure limits (PELs), and probably a couple of the threshold limit values (TLVs) as well. It's actually a rather sad commentary that the air in the chemistry lab where I work (where we have many, many liters of benzene, carbon tet., and the like) is less hazardous to one's health than the air in many bars in states that haven't yet curtailed smoking in businesses.
That said, I fully support people's right to smoke in their own homes or in open-air environments (where chronic exposure to unsafe chemical levels is not an issue), and also oppose the various extortionate "sin taxes" that have been levied on tobacco products in most states. However, being part of society means that when you engage in actions that have the potential to negatively affect other people you sometimes need to accept that you'll be asked to limit the scope of those actions.
