Shall We Ban Smoking In Public Restaurants?

Everybody knows that smoking is bad. It's bad for your lungs, teeth, heart and many more. However, a lot of people still smoke, some even more than a pack everyday. Informed about the consequences, people make this choice themselves. But at the same time they make the choice for people that surround them – friends, family, even people they are not acquainted with, but who are physically close to them at the moment – on the street or at the bus stop. People are forced to inhale the smoke from a person, who had a sudden urge for a cigarette.

If we speak about food & drinks establishments, however, it's also a choice, whether to go to this particular place, or to another one. When people don't have this choice with streets or bus stops, they can choose where to eat, based on whether smoking is allowed there. I think, that it should be the decision of the owner, whether or not to allow smoking inside their restaurant or bar. Or course, allowing it may lead to losing some customers, but this will be only up to the owner himself.

The purpose of the law that bans smoking in public restaurants is to save people from smoke they don't want to smell. However, it might not be that successful. Not all the restaurants have special places for people to smoke, so people have to step outside and smoke outside of the restaurant on the street. This way people, who are inside the restaurant are safe. But what about those on the street? They don't have a choice and they still have to inhale all this.

Smoking law seems to be all about giving people a chance to choose the lifestyle they want and not to harm other people at the same time. It looks to me, however, as the government restricts the citizens even more, the smokers, the non-smokers, the restaurant owners. The best solution, to my mind, would be to allow the owners choose for themselves, if people are allowed to smoke inside their place or not, or create separate rooms for smokers and non-smokers (with proper venting, of course). They shall also hang a sign on the entrance and make this info available on their websites, so people could make the choice by themselves and stopped being told what to do all the time.