Originally posted by rearden:
Restaurants, bars, etc. are not public places, so it's none of the government's business as far as I'm concerned. They're privately-owned establishments. Considering this is supposedly a free country, a smoking policy should be the business owner's decision. If he wants to ban smoking, fine. Hell, if he wants to REQUIRE smoking--it's his property.



By this way of thinking, it should be legal for restaurants, bars, etc. to piss on your food before they serve it to you, let the rats and roaches crawl over everything, and use stray dogs as meat. Ok, that's on the extreme end of things, but the point is that our goverment has been charged with the responsibility to protect the health of its people. In doing so, the rights and freedoms of private businesses must be regulated and restricted. No one seems to have a problem with the health department banning other practices, why should smoking be any different?

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