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If you want to use the obesity complaint, the issue is plain as day.
...because if we're sitting in a restaurant and you have a cheeseburger, I don't inhale cholesterol and clog my arteries. I can, however, inhale your smoke and fuck up my lungs and get cancer. I then also smell of your smoke (which is yet another reason not to smoke, is smelling like that all the time).
Having to sit around and breathe the exhaled cancer potion of those around me is not what I call a comfortable or safe environment for my health. This is, of course, not to mention the terrible smell, and how it makes things you eat taste terrible.
Your "right" to pollute your own lungs and do what you want to your body (the "it's my body, i'll do what I want" argument) ends where it infringes on my right to NOT have my lungs polluted by others, plain and simple. Your right to "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" finds its end where your enjoyment prevents mine; if you want to smell and get cancer, go right ahead... but you have no right to subject me to the same.
And the "restaurants should cater to the smoker if they want, you can eat someplace else that caters to the non-smoker" argument is weak nonsense and you all know it. A business owners' right to run their business how they want ends at the line of preserving public health.
I suppose you'd have preferred that all business owners took it upon themselves to replace their asbestos insulation at their own pace, rather than being mandated by the government to do it right away? Because after all, it's their business, they should decide to run it how they want, right? Nonsense. Public health is more important.
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