If a business wants to allow smoking then the so be it, government should stay out!

Thank you for your reply. I'm not sure if you are in the workplace, but workers have certain rights and in no case should have to go into a hazardous environment. OSHA regulates this. (OSHA.gov) Also, not to be condescending, but having mailmen picketing and/or talking to the owner's is not going to happen and it is naive to think so. It's not a matter of avoiding hazards, it is regulating those hazards so that in a free society, a normal person won't be surprised by that hazard. The kind of logic that you state that people can just avoid those types of places where smoking is allowed should be changed to maybe a 'members-only club--ONLY smokers allowed" with subsequent air recirculation systems that don't allow any smoke into the environment. The costs for that along with no nonsmokers coming in would be too big a cost to bear for the restaurants. And what happens when the restaurant doesn't make it and goes belly-up ? How do you decontaminate a building that has years of smoking buildup ? Again it is a health hazard. An example from OSHA's website follows: ' By implementing these smoking ban provisions, the Agency believes that even a reduction in workplace smoking will reduce risk to smoking employees by a significant amount." As I said previously, the role of government is to protect people from hazards (including in the workplace environment), not from themselves. Personal pleasure should not trump public health. OSHA (which stands for Occupational Health and Safety Act) protects against unsafe workplaces. Cigarettes contain thousands of cancer-causing and other lethal chemicals. Putting those substances into the air which can be breathed in by people who choose NOT to smoke is immoral and soon will be illegal. Your second argument is a no-brainer. All of the items you mentioned are necessary for our society to function at the level it is at. Even still, they are regulated to produce less and less pollutants. Rarely is it concentrated in a public area, but when it is, carbon-monoxide alarms are going off all over. Smoking serves no useful purpose. It is a recreational drug that cannot be contained. If smokers want to continue to feed their addiction, they should have to wear a toxic suit complete with it's own air supply. To foist their poisons into the air for others to breathe pretty soon will be criminal. Smokers contaminate the air but are not more strictly regulated to reduce their pollutants as other things are. Do you know that my asthma medication increase in cost six-hundred percent this year?? The reason ? The propellant used to get the medicine into my lungs wasn't environmentally friendly. But yet we are still arguing about letting smokers smoke. Because they are addicted and can't quit. The medical costs alone are staggering. Throw in lost productivity, litter patrol, etc. and it is just too much. It needs to be banned outright. Personal freedom in America is important. However, smoking is not a matter of personal freedom. It is a poison that makes the air toxic to breathe and should not be allowed ANYWHERE let alone in enclosed areas where other non-smoking people have just as much right to be in.