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I still believe that bar owners should be allowed to decide for themselves if smoking should be allowed in their establishments.

I actually feel the same about restaurants but society has long since decided they disagree with me and there is no Constitutional right to smoke anywhere you want.

    At least with a restaurant you can make the argument that everyone should be able to eat without poisoning themselves, but in a bar? Nobody needs to drink and drinking certainly isn't helping your health and I still believe there are enough jobs out there that some poor bartender or server isn't going to be forced into working in a smoking bar if it's really a health concern for them.

Before the statewide ban on smoking in bars here (in Colorado) some would advertise they were "smoker-friendly". You couldn't smoke in a bar in the town where I lived, but you could go to some bar outside the city and smoke to your heart's (dis?)content.

Now Colorado treats e-cigs the same as they do cigarettes which I agree is kind of ridiculous and you can't even use an e-cig outdoors in some parts of town here. I'm actually okay with that. I don't need to vape everywhere I go.

I didn't even need to be told that I shouldn't vape indoors where smoking wasn't allowed. I just knew it was wrong just as surely as I believe outdoor bans on smoking or vaping are wrong too.

And while vaping is a lot less obnoxious than smoking, let's not lie to ourselves or others. It does produce a smell and it does put chemicals besides water vapor into the air.

This really hit home a couple of months ago as I was dragged into the non-smoking area of the downtown touristy area of my city. I was really jonesing and to make things worse my e-cig was almost dead anyway. When I did try to take a discreet hit outdoors it just wasn't working well at all. And then I saw a woman just chasing clouds all by herself. She had dutifully gone outside but was ignoring the outdoor smoking/vaping ban and I could smell it from 20-30 feet away.

She wasn't bothering me other than making me a bit jealous because her e-cig was working just fine and mine wasn't but it kind of struck me that it's not quite as innocuous as many of us would like to think.

And don't even think about smoking marijuana anywhere in public even if you're allowed to smoke cigarettes there. Or just go ahead and do it anyway. You probably won't get caught, but you could still be arrested for it.

While I don't mind I can understand other people's objections and we have laws about vaping and smoking anything in public.

And even before smoking was banned by law some bars were taking it upon themselves to ban smoking all on their own and not just in Colorado but in other states as well.

If you're a smoker, I highly recommend quitting. I substituted with e-cigs and I still wish I would quit those but it's a lesser evil IMO.

What really helped me quit was the reaction of the tobacco companies and their distributors and retailers to the big 2009 tax increase on cigs. Even BEFORE the higher taxes went into effect they raised prices and blamed Obama. I saw price increases 2 months before the tax went into effect that were 60% higher than what I had been paying and the tax increase wasn't even close to .

A 2009 law approved by Congress, the Children's Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act, increased the federal tax rate on cigarettes by 61.66 cents per pack (from 39 cents to $1.0066 per pack)

https://www.tobaccofreekids.or...

So I should have had to pay about $6 more per carton WHEN the tax actually took effect. Instead I was paying $25 more per carton 2 months BEFORE the tax took effect.

Fuck those greedy bastards!

I didn't even quit right away. I kept buying them for months and so they probably figured we were so addicted we had no choice - which may have been true to some extent, but I did quit being an RJR customer eventually.

There is lots of research linking cost of cigarettes to reduction of smoking. Since you're too lazy to look it up (you could try Google) or allergic to facts, here are some references: (sorry about the sloppy formatting but I'm too lazy to format for trolls.)

1 Philip Morris document, "General Comments on Smoking and Health," Appendix I in The Perspective of PM International on Smoking and Health Initiatives, March 29, 1985, Bates No. 2023268329-8348. 2 Ellen Merlo, Senior Vice President of Corporate Affairs, Philip Morris, 1994 draft speech to the Philip Morris USA Trade Council, http://legacy.library.ucsf.edu/tid/oyf35e00. 3 R.J. Reynolds Executive D. S. Burrows, âoeEstimated Change In Industry Trend Following Federal Excise Tax Increase,â RJR Document No. 501988846 -8849, September 20, 1982. 4 Philip Morris Research Executive Myron Johnston, âoeTeenage Smoking and the Federal Excise Tax on Cigarettes,â PM Document No. 2001255224, September 17, 1981. 5 Philip Morris Executive Jon Zoler, âoeHandling An Excise Tax Increase,â PM Document No. 2022216179, September 3, 1987. 6 Philip Morris Executive Claude Schwab, âoeCigarette Attributes and Quitting,â PM Doc. 2045447810, March 4, 1993. 7 Chaloupka, F, et al., âoeTax, Price and Cigarette Smoking: Evidence from the Tobacco Documents and implications for tobacco company marketing strategies,â Tobacco Control 11: 62-72, March 2002. 8 See, e.g., Chaloupka, F, âoeMacro-Social Influences: The Effects of Prices and Tobacco Control Policies on the Demand for Tobacco Products,â Nicotine and Tobacco Research, 1999; other studies at http://tigger.uic.edu/~fjc/; Tauras, J, âoePublic Policy and Smoking Cessation Among Young adults in the United States,â Health Policy 6*:321-32, 2004; Tauras, J, et al., âoeEffects of Price and Access Laws on Teenage Smoking Initiation: A National Longitudinal Analysis,â Bridging the Gap Research, ImpacTeen, April 24, 2001, and others at http://www.impacteen.org/researchproducts.htm. Chaloupka, F & Pacula, R, An Examination of Gender and Race Differences in Youth Smoking Responsiveness to Price and Tobacco Control Policies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 6541, April 1998, http://tigger.uic.edu/~fjc; Emery, S, et al., âoeDoes Cigarette Price Influence Adolescent Experimentation?,â Journal of Health Economics 20:261-270, 2001; Evans, W & Huang, L, Cigarette Taxes and Teen Smoking: New Evidence from Panels of Repeated Cross-Sections, working paper, April 15, 1998, www.bsos.umd.edu/econ/evans/wrkpap.htm; Harris, J & Chan, S, âoeThe Continuum-of-Addiction: Cigarette Smoking in Relation to Price Among Americans Aged 15-29,â Health Economics Letters 2(2):3-12, February 1998, www.mit.edu/people/jeffrey. 9 See, e.g., U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), âoeResponses to Cigarette Prices By Race/Ethnicity, Income, and Age Groups â" United States 1976-1993,â Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report 47(29):605-609, July 31, 1998, http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00054047.htm; Chaloupka, F & Pacula, R, An Examination of Gender and Race Differences in Youth Smoking Responsiveness to Price and Tobacco Control Policies, National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 6541, April 1998. 10 Ringel, J & Evans, W, âoeCigarette Taxes and Smoking During Pregnancy,â American Journal of Public Health, 2001 See also, TFK Factsheet, Harm Caused by Pregnant Women Smoking or Being Exposed to Secondhand Smoke, http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/research/factsheets/pdf/0007.

Smoking 1 pack/day is about $150 per month, or $900 for 6 months. You can buy a 'sorta decent LCD TV for that, if you look around.

One would need discipline to save the money into an account for 6 months, and not spend it in the meantime.

It is my understanding that people who smoke have a tendency (statistically) to be people who do not form rational long-term planning and who tend not to put off pleasure for future greater gain.

Those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.

You are scaremongering. You are pathetic, and I no longer care what you have to say.

Suit yourself.. If you would like to peek at recent history where we decided something else was bad and taxed it to discourage it's use, look no further than the tax on a 35 cent pack of cigarettes.
http://www.taxadmin.org/FTA/rate/cigarett.html
http://tobaccofreekids.org/reports/prices/

Higher carbon tax on coal will discourage use and put pressure on other energy resources. Seen the price of corn and corn products lately?

Again, those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it.
and I no longer care what you have to say.
Ignoring it won't make it go away.

Lung cancer kills more women than breast cancer. Lung cancer has killed more women than breast cancer every year since 1987. And the gap is widening: lung cancer deaths in women are increasing. CDC TFK

Lung Cancer kills more women every year than breast, uterine, and ovarian cancers combined. Joan's Legacy

"There are four major cancers that account for over 50 percent of cancer deaths. Far and away, the most important in both men and women is lung cancer." PBS online focus

Yet women's magazines and other media pass out gobs and slathers of information on breast cancer. They hardly ever even mention lung cancer. By an amazing coincidence, they run a lot of tobacco product advertising. ACSH

Oh wait, it's not a coincidence: NIH

ex.
government subsidies for tobacco farmers
government anti-tobacco spending

-bs

Overall, a great settlement. But, I wonder if the warnings will follow the obfuscation standards that liquor and cigarette manufacturers use. (Why the pregnant woman warning before the drunk driving warning? Surely there are more drivers than pregnant people!).

I wonder if the warning would like this:

PLAYS IN ANY CD PLAYER. TO ACCESS ADDITIONAL DIGITAL MUSIC FILES ON A COMPUTER, YOU NEED MICROSOFT WINDOWS 98 OR LATER, MICROSOFT WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER 7.0 (INCLUDED FREE ON THIS CD), AND ACCESS TO THE INTERNET (ALSO INCLUDED; TRY AOL FOR 50 HOURS FOR FREE). ACCESS WILL REQUIRE NOT MORE THAN SIX DOWNLOADS. NOT DESIGNED TO WORK IN DVD, MP3, OR COMPUTER CD-ROM PLAYERS. FOR A LIST OF KNOWN COMPATIBLITY PROBLEMS RELATED TO COMPUTERS, CD PLAYERS, AND DIGITAL MUSIC PLAYING DEVICES, PLEASE VISIT WWW.RECORDSTORE.COM/01lOI/|I\!.HTML

(Yeah, I know it's in upper case. It's meant to be hard to read. That's why liquor and cigarette labels use it...)

According to The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids" report on the spending of the settlement, Massachusetts is spending $43.1 million dollars a year, well within the range of the CDC's recommended funding levels. Massachusetts is 4th in ranking, in fact. And Massachusetts has had a tobacco-prevention program in place since before the settlement (1993, I believe). Please, don't paint all of New England with the same brush!

Check out this chart for the source of my information.

According to The Campaign for Tobacco Free Kids" report on the spending of the settlement, Massachusetts is spending $43.1 million dollars a year, well within the range of the CDC's recommended funding levels. Massachusetts is 4th in ranking, in fact. And Massachusetts has had a tobacco-prevention program in place since before the settlement (1993, I believe). Please, don't paint all of New England with the same brush!

Check out this chart for the source of my information.