who exactly is being protected there?

Depending on who they hired as their employees, it ould be employees, if they followed the same logic that was used here.

The thinking was that some people could make their best wages working in restaurants and bars. So they worked there, even though dangerous to their health.

The law was intended to protect workers who had to breath the air while on the job.

I don’t know the situation of the cigar shops, or where that happened. But if it happened out here, any owner who opened such a shop could take her/his health into her/his own hands and smoke like chimney, if so preferred.

Once an employee is hired, it’s assumed this person simply wants a job and needs the job, so will take on risk in order to get by, rather than getting kicked out on the street or going hungry, etc., especially in a period of high unemployment. You may not agree with it; whatever. But that was the logic — workers deserve a safe workplace.

And the anti-smoking movement though it initially did good work seems to have devolved to a self perpetuating politically rather than health motivated organization. I have little respect for these people who play so loose with the evidence, using it only when it suits their aims.

But I don’t think it is up to them to change international practices of American tobacco companies. That is a fault of general business practice, another villain in my book. If I were king, businesses would have to operate in every culture or climate in an ethical fashion. Domestic policy would have to be the same as international practice. I think that would have been the saving grace of true globalism. The way it has turned out is that companies (and not just American ones) look for places where they can get dirty but rich.

How would you propose they battle big Tobacco, re preventing them from traading abroad and stopping the cargo ships?

Here in California the nonsmokers were trying to get smoke-free restaurants in the 90s. In a perhaps clever/devious strategy, the tobacco companies worked with legislators to broaden it to include bars — thinking bar patrons would fight tooth and nail to defeat the bill. And so restaurants would still allow smoking, too.

And the smokers did fight it — it was a big issue here. But what the tobacco companies hadn’t factored in was that there were more people who were fed up with smoky rooms and their clothes reeking the next day if they went out for a few drinks.

The tobacco crowd must have been panicky when the initiative passed.

And some of my favorite bars / bartenders voiced anger, protecting the “rights” of their customers, etc.

But I have to say — I have friends who refused to wait for me inside some places because of the pall and the stench. And now we go inside and the air is fresh — it’s as if the places are new! They cleaned the brown grime off walls and pictures, it was a like some surreal interior decorator fixed things when you weren’t looking. Or like getting a new glasses prescription, suddenly you could see what places looked like without the haze.

And they are still in business, despite all the angry rhetoric. And California still has bars and restaurants.

Now, when I travel to a state with smoking in bars or restaurants, I’m surprised. Omigod — I remember this. How did I ever do this, for so long?

Last note: several years ago I was in an SF suburb with a small, blue-collar downtown, including a couple divey bars. I had time to kill and decided to have a drink in a couple, just to check ‘em out.

And several had ash trays out! I finally asked, and one bartender got defensive–there is an exception for owner-operated bars with no employees. (Employee health was a driving issue for the new law.) I didn’t push it — even laughed when I left. I’m sure the old regulars were glad to see me go. And to be honest, I found the pugnacity of their glares almost — endearing. Like I was seeing the last of the stegosauruses or some such, and they weren’t going without a fight.

That being said, I have to say that, these days, I’ve become unused to even seeing people smoke, so it seems strange to me when I do see it. I think that’s a good thing, personally.

And Bibliomom, I almost jumped when I read your first comment here. In the final weeks of my mother’s terminal illness, she had to confess her secret return to the smoking habit of her youth, once we found her wandering out of the house in her nightgown, trying to get to the store to buy a pack. She, too, had been hiding them in the back of the closet.

Stevo: Thanks for the link. Though I agree that anyone having any evidence of tobacco being good for anything will have difficulty having it accepted anywhere, the studies in that article for the most part seem to relate to some very particular forms of those cancers, and for particular populations, sort of the equivalent of someone beating you to a pulp but making sure none of your toes get broken. Cold comfort as they say.