The V.A. legislature should support Governer Kain's inititive to band smoking in restaurants.

Public smoking is still an extremely controversial issue in America today, and hopefully we have offered some new perspectives on this particular point of contention to the readers of the debate. I want to reconstruct my argument around a single statement from my opponent's second round argument: "Some [studies] even show that a smoke-free measure improves business. " The reader will remember that my argument was that restaurants can serve the needs of their patrons far better than any government. If going smoke-free helps business, which is what my opponent has claimed, we can expect that more and more restaurants will go smoke-free in the near future. We are indeed in trying economic times, and no restaurant can afford to coast along doing what is not most profitable. My opponent even concludes his arguments with a litany of costs that restaurants incur when they allow their patrons to smoke. He argues that restaurants waste huge sums of money by refusing to go non-smoking. It seems likely to me that as the economy gets tighter, more and more restaurants will make the shift to non-smoking--with no (expensive) government intervention required. So, the reader should now be able to see that, for much of his argument, my opponent is actually making a good case that no government intervention is necessary. In other words, he is arguing for my side! My opponent is clearly not arguing for my side when he lists any number of negative health statistics related to secondhand smoke, but neither is he naming the source from whence he drew these. A quick Google search reveals that at least one stat--that 3,000 non-smokers died from secondhand smoke--is from the very same discredited EPA source that he used in Round 1. Since he states no sources whatsoever, I have to assume that his other stats come from the same source--and are therefore equally spurious. After I objected to his source in Round 1, the burden was on him to make clear what sources he was using. Even if there is a grain of truth to his data, his conclusion is erroneous. He claims that banning smoking in restaurants should decrease the number of future deaths, but this assumes that at least one person has died because of secondhand smoke inhaled in a restaurant, which is not clearly implied at all by the (questionable) stats he offers. If secondhand smoke is in fact able to kill nonsmokers, I would expect that the majority of the supposed 3,000 deaths come from nonsmokers who live with smokers and breathe smoke for much of the day, instead of from nonsmokers who spend, say, five hours tops a week in restaurants. That brings us to his one solid argument, which is that people who work in restaurants, perhaps particularly the waiters and waitresses who are out on the floor with the smokers, are negatively affected by the secondhand smoke. I admit, I don't envy the people who have to work under these conditions. I don't pretend that secondhand smoke is an enjoyable thing at all, but lots of people work jobs under unenjoyable conditions. If the smell is too unpleasant, or the employee believes his or her health is at significant risk, he or she can quit and seek another job with more favorable conditions. If enough employees leave restaurants for these reasons, restaurants will have one more reason--on top of those diligently outlined by my opponent--to disallow smoking on their premises. Simultaneously, we may soon see employees willing to work in smoking conditions paid a premium. Restaurants will maximize their profit, which every day becomes more and more dependent on disallowing smoking. Workers will maximize their happiness, which is a combination of satisfying work conditions and money earned. The free market can't work everything out, as we're seeing right now every day on the news, but this is one situation where it can. Let the government focus on other, less transparent problems. This problem, which has been in a process of alleviation for years now as restaurants cater to a public that has grown more and more hostile toward smoking, will be worked out naturally by the restaurants themselves. My opponent has provided no solid sourced evidence that secondhand smoke is extremely dangerous, and has said much to help my own case. I strongly urge you to vote CON. *Footnote: At one point, my opponent explains that a worker who smokes costs his or her employer an extra $1,000 a year. This raises some interesting questions, but is not within the scope of this debate, which is limited to whether a government should ban smoking in restaurants.