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Originally Posted by FoolThemAll
I don't understand the point of the license. Aren't the bar/restaurant/ect owners perfectly capable of deciding on and implementing a smoking or non-smoking policy without the assistance of a licensing program? I don't care how small the costs are, why should commercial property owners have to spend time and money in order to allow smoking on their property?
I'm fine with smoking bans in government buildings, though. Or rather, I'm fine with whatever the voters decide.
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Same argument could be made for liquor licenses, gambling machine licenses, etc. In the end, I probably agree with you. However, it seems that licensing / special zoning is a way we've come up with to regulate activities that are legal, but not desireable to everyone in the population. I can understand people not wanting to be around cigarette smoke, and I can see how its difficult to get people who run the bars to change. If nothing else, change is frequently inherently difficult. I think it would have the affect that many business which do not explicitly cater to the alchohol / late night crowd would drop smoking at their side bars (places like Ruby Tuesday, for example) and that some bars would adopt no-smoking policies (probably newer establishments trying to cut $$$), and some bars well-known as places to get shitty and so forth will pay a little $$$ to keep their clientele that smokes. Furthermore, places that are explicitly cigar bars will pay the extra $$$, as its the only reason their clientele comes. Seems like a reasonable compromise to me.