Please excuse my political incorrectness... but I was in an Irish-American Pub. But since we're on the subject, the Pubs in Ireland, smoke if they damn well want to, regardless.

With tobacco lounges! Eeek! A mouse! A cigarette!......

Let the market decide -- James Joyner on the emergence of tobacco lounges in cities where smoking in bars has been banned:This actually seems like the perfect solution: Public restaurants and bars are smoke free so that the majority of...

Friday afternoon, in an Irish Pub, I had to listen to some lady flat-out bitch about the smoky atmosphere.

LJD,

Nice try!

You were obviously not in an Irish Pub since the pubs in Ireland are smoke-free.

If one chooses not to smoke or chooses not to patronize an establishment that allows smoking, then he or she has only not to go there.

The idea that "If I don't like smoking" you must be like me and not smoke is about as un American as anything I can think of.

But there are many closed minded people who will never change and will choose to ban smoking hoping to get in on the millions yet to be made by sleazy lawyers.

Yes, we are all working 7 days a week shuffling between our jobs at McDonald's and Ruby Tuesdays. It is a miracle so many people can spend so much time blogging.

And yes, people do have a choice of where to work - people change jobs all the time, even at restaurants and bars! And what is to say these people will stop at smoking? You know, lots of people are allergic to peanuts, so why allow restaurants to offer them and cook with them to the chagrin of the lowly worker who is forced to work in a place that cooks with food he is allergic to?

If that's not the case, then it seems like another example of free market forces at play. Here's a job, but it entails working in a smoke-filled environment? Got a problem with that? Well, this job's not for you. There are alternative environments in which to work, just not at this particular place.

Were the club the sole employer of service staff, then this might be an issue. Since it's a unique employer it offers no hinderance to employees seeking smoke-free working environments, except in this one place in the entire city. Maybe all the employees like to work in a place that permits them to smoke on the job?

Rather than making tobacco stores re-invent themselves, anti-smoking laws should have been tailored to permit the business owners to decide whether or not it was in their economic interest to go smoke-free. As the majority of American's prefer no-smoking places, the majority of businesses would enact no-smoking policies. Those who chose to cater to smokers would acknowledge the limited number of their potential clientele and decide to take that economic risk.

Most anti-smoking laws are utter intrusions by the nanny state in decisions that properly belong in the hands of private businesses and individuals. Are non-smokers just too stupid to find places that have no-smoking policies so that they need the government to make the universe non-smoking? If that's the problem, it's a far more serious one than a pack of cigarettes...

None, you say? $2.00 an hour, you say, plus tips? ;)

Remember, the New Republican Economy consists of little other than low-pay service jobs...so these people don't have much of a choice.

Friday afternoon, in an Irish Pub, I had to listen to some lady flat-out bitch about the smoky atmosphere. There are at least two other Irish pubs in town, and several other bars that are non-smoking. My comment to her- Shut up and go somewhere else! If the owner gives a crap about your money, he'll change the rules on his own.