Colorado Smoking Ban

I don't smoke, but I am always fascinated by smoking bans and the sort of thinking they evoke. Cindy Rodriguez, writing in the Denver Post, explains:

This is the year Colorado will ban smoking from all restaurants, bars and nightclubs, giving the majority of Coloradans who don't smoke the right to breathe carcinogen-free air.

That's an interesting way to describe a law that takes away the freedom to make one's own smoking and non-smoking arrangements. Another interesting bit:

"You are more likely to die of secondhand smoke at work than from a terrorist attack," Rep. Jack Pommer, a Democrat from Boulder, said during a news conference Wednesday morning.

I don't know what I find more surprising: the idea that someone has exactly quantified the risk of dying in a terrorist attack or the idea that this is an argument for anything. Another bit:

It makes sense, considering polls show that eight out of 10 people in the state don't smoke. Why should we continue to allow smokers to impose their unhealthy habit on the rest of us?

How many people can't stand the idea of eating in the non-smoking section of restaurant that also has smoking section? And if they are the majority, why didn't the institutions that allow smoking go out of business years ago?

Tags: smoking, terrorism, non-sequiturs