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cherydactylI'm on a local email list that is family-oriented, but frequently drifts off specific topic and into social commentary on anything tangentially relating to children and child-rearing. This meaning anything to do with culture, period, sometimes. And I'm as guilty as the next person. It's actually why I like the list.
Here's the text of an email I composed in response to a thread that started with asking about which restaurants were smoke-free and has drifted on to being about smoking bans in restaurants.
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While I agree that prohibition is, and Prohibition was, a terrible idea, there is one difference between alcohol and smoking that is important. No one ever got sick just from having drinking going on near them. That is not true for smoking. And I think this is true whether we mean tobacco or other things that can be smoked.
There is good evidence that "second hand smoke" is bad for anyone, and particularly bad for children. While I defend your or anybody's right to smoke at all (it's your choice what you want to put in or through your body, and no Big Brother laws should stop you), I support bans in some (quasi-)public places, such as malls and all the establishments therein including the restaurants.
I also support "no smoking withing X distance" of places where smoking is banned. I go to group meetings at the Michigan Union on a regular basis. Often my kids go with me. Sometimes getting in that building means we must run a gauntlet of smokers. I have asthma. I have had pneumonia. My kids may have genetic predispositions toward the same. I think it's reasonable not to want to be forced to breathe second hand smoke or expose my kids to it.
I can get behind the idea that going to a restaurant is a privilege not a right, mostly. Well, actually, no...it is a right for all people to be treated equally. I think what we really mean by this is it's not mandatory or sensible that any given person be able to dictate that a quasi-public place like a restaurant have an environment to their tastes.
But so much of our culture goes on in "private" establishments. Restaurants, hotels, sports arenas, bars, music venues, movie theatres, and shopping centers are all nominally private but functionally public places. The number and scope of truly public spaces is small and marginalized (libraries, city hall, the federal building). Especially if any outdoor venue (such as a park, the diag, the plaza next to the Michigan Union) is considered smoking-allowed simply by virture of being outdoors, people who need or wish to avoid second hand smoke can become virtual shut-ins, practically shut out of the public sphere. I'm not sure what I'm advocating except to say that simply saying a private owner can or should be able to do what he or she likes and the market will bear isn't thinking deeply enough about the impact of what happens in quasi-public places and outdoor public spaces, and who's affected and how when there is smoking present.
I hope this had been food for thought on the issue.
---
Now we'll see if I get flamed. :) If I only get one person to think about how privatized our culture is, and how that interacts with "public" smoking, then I did the right thing.
Here's the text of an email I composed in response to a thread that started with asking about which restaurants were smoke-free and has drifted on to being about smoking bans in restaurants.
---
While I agree that prohibition is, and Prohibition was, a terrible idea, there is one difference between alcohol and smoking that is important. No one ever got sick just from having drinking going on near them. That is not true for smoking. And I think this is true whether we mean tobacco or other things that can be smoked.
There is good evidence that "second hand smoke" is bad for anyone, and particularly bad for children. While I defend your or anybody's right to smoke at all (it's your choice what you want to put in or through your body, and no Big Brother laws should stop you), I support bans in some (quasi-)public places, such as malls and all the establishments therein including the restaurants.
I also support "no smoking withing X distance" of places where smoking is banned. I go to group meetings at the Michigan Union on a regular basis. Often my kids go with me. Sometimes getting in that building means we must run a gauntlet of smokers. I have asthma. I have had pneumonia. My kids may have genetic predispositions toward the same. I think it's reasonable not to want to be forced to breathe second hand smoke or expose my kids to it.
I can get behind the idea that going to a restaurant is a privilege not a right, mostly. Well, actually, no...it is a right for all people to be treated equally. I think what we really mean by this is it's not mandatory or sensible that any given person be able to dictate that a quasi-public place like a restaurant have an environment to their tastes.
But so much of our culture goes on in "private" establishments. Restaurants, hotels, sports arenas, bars, music venues, movie theatres, and shopping centers are all nominally private but functionally public places. The number and scope of truly public spaces is small and marginalized (libraries, city hall, the federal building). Especially if any outdoor venue (such as a park, the diag, the plaza next to the Michigan Union) is considered smoking-allowed simply by virture of being outdoors, people who need or wish to avoid second hand smoke can become virtual shut-ins, practically shut out of the public sphere. I'm not sure what I'm advocating except to say that simply saying a private owner can or should be able to do what he or she likes and the market will bear isn't thinking deeply enough about the impact of what happens in quasi-public places and outdoor public spaces, and who's affected and how when there is smoking present.
I hope this had been food for thought on the issue.
---
Now we'll see if I get flamed. :) If I only get one person to think about how privatized our culture is, and how that interacts with "public" smoking, then I did the right thing.
