I read a friend's recent post and had to comment. This is a topic that I debated about much with myself and others around me (Jessi, I do miss our debates since I left...haven't had a worthy opponent since) and I ended up voting against it. No, I'm not a smoker, and I do like the idea of having more places be smoke free, but this was not the problem that I saw with this initiative. In the end, it bothered me that, once again, a control was being put on a freedom of choice. It is my choice to go to a place that is smoking vs a place that is non-smoking, just as it is (or was) the choice of the owner to make the place smoking or non. If I had a problem with a place being smoking, I could write or talk to the owner and let them know that my business would be taken elsewhere, less they change. This gave the owner a right to choose. I do not think that it is right for anyone to dictate the way anyone runs a legit business. It is the owner's responsibility to create an environment that will bring customers and the customer's responsibility to find a business that caters to them.

One way that I have thought about it is that I am left-handed, which makes me a minority in the dominant-hand arena. Now we could pass a law making it illegal for any business to sell left-handed or ambidextrous goods. This would make more room for right-handed things and I would have to force myself (willing or no) to use right-handed items.

My point is that I should have as much of a choice of being able to go to a store that carries left-handed goods as a person has a choice to go to a smoking or non-smoking establishment and it's not right for someone else to take that freedom of choice from them by forcing the decision.