Should SF's Smoking Ban Extend To Bars' "Smoking Patios"?

another dumb idea by people who are great at dumb ideas, but bad at providing basic services.

fix the roads, Muni and crime, then try and ruin local businesses, SF. this is crapola.

What Greg Dewar said. Not a single person with any common sense left in City Hall.

I mean, who exactly am I bothering or offending if I am outside in the open air with other smokers? My conclusion: no one, except the tender sensibilities of a city of busy-bodies and nosy folks who all want us to live in their idealized version of the Happiest Place On Earth.

Why can't a business decide if it wants to allow smoking on it's patio?

Does the Politburo, I mean the Board of Supervisor, have nothing else to worry about?

Here;s the source of the bans, Johnson and Johnson, makers of Chantix, Nicoderm, and other quit smoking drugs:

http://www.rwjf.org/publichealth/product.jsp?id=14912

And where the money is going: Note on page seven, the "inside out" provision promising to return later for the patios AFTER business owners spend thousands to build them for their many smoking customers, clearly showing that they have absolutly no concern about local businesses

http://www.no-smoke.org/pdf/CIA_Fundamentals.pdf

This issue riles me so much because the majority of people who got indoor smoking banned said, at that time, "What's your problem? You can't just go OUTSIDE to smoke?" or "We need to do this to protect patrons and employees who cannot enjoy the establishment full of smoke." These were repeated like implicit promises that if we just allow them to spend hours inside a place without smoke, they will be satisfied.

Guess what? They are not satisfied and they want more. Power-hungry nutjobs that need to worry about something more important than me having a cigarette OUTSIDE.

I've always found it only slightly less than hypocritical that people are so concerned about the effects of second-hand smoke to their health at a bar, a place in which you go to drink a liquid that is harmful to your body in excess. Now, I'm in no way knocking drinking; just let us have one friggin' area to smoke while we drink.

Damnit, forgot to close the bold tag. Sorry all.

Please let the smokers smoke if they choose to! I am a big fan of the indoor smoking bars still in (clandestine) operation in SF. I don't think there should be restrictions on smoking anywhere out of doors. HOWEVER, the recent turn of events (one of my favorite cafes just outlawed patio smoking, Amber turned into something non-smoking, the impending no-smoking-anywhere-in-SF laws) has definitely made me rethink my own smoking.

From David Sedaris, When You Are Engulfed in Flames:
When New York banned smoking in the workplace, I quit working. When it was banned in restaurants, I stopped eating out and when the price of cigarettes hit seven dollars a pack I gathered all my stuff together and went to France.

Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2008/05/05/080505fa_fact_sedaris?currentPage=2#ixzz0ePvkba8q