Tangled Green Thoughts

By this summer Toronto public places including bars and clubs will be completely smoke-free. As a non-smoker I thank the health commissioner for thinking of people like me, but I can't help but feel the injustice of it. If we are to be mulicultural about race, multichallenged about disability and multisexual about preference, why are we being so discriminant about smoking? The health commissioner argues that he is not taking away a smoker's right to smoke (because they are still free to smoke outside and in their homes), only a smoker's right to harm others. But his is a mere health perspective, failing to account the business or freedom perspectives.

Many bars in the past year have put thousands of dollars into ventilation units that now are worth nothing. Most of these bars have smoking clientele who need a social space to enjoy their toxic habit. Banning smoking will be bad for their business and the general economy. People will inevitably find other means and areas to smoke that won't involve pumping cash into small Canadian businesses. Who is the health commissioner to tell grown adults, smokers and non-smokers, that they don't have the right to do something to themselves if they choose to? I agree that smokers don't have the right to hurt others, but what if 1. The others don't care? 2. The others accepted that a bar fundamentally has smoke? By not letting a bar owner choose to have a smoking or non-smoking environment, in essence, the commissioner is saying that the adults in this city can't make informed decisions, and we need government intervention to baby our actions. I would even go so far to say if a like-minded group of individuals decided to open up a place where they pummel each other a-la-fightclub, they should be allowed to do so.

A bar owner, as an adult, should have the right to make a bar that let's people smoke in it, and people should have a right to choose to go or not to go. Maybe I'll start nonsense ruckus about how clubs have music too loud, and it's a health hazard to my hearing. I'll say, "Sure you have a right to blow your eardrums off at the privacy of your own home, but at a public place you shouldn't have the right to damage my eardrums." Let's see how well clubs do with music at library volume. Let's see how fundamental loud music is to a club and then understand how fundamental smoking is to a bar.

PS I mainly have a problem with bars. I think the health commissioner has a strong point if you're talking about restaurants.