I could see allowing a situation where bars could apply for a special smoking permit, have to pay extra for the privilege (to keep EVERY bar from doing it), and thus be allowed to become "smoker's bars".

But beyond that... as paranoid as I am of government interference in our lives I am happy to allow them to ban smoking.

Well, not necessarily. We have become a culture of entitlement. "I want what I am owed" is heard time and time again. Our court systems are filled with frivolous cases. People win multi-million dollar settlements (at least initially) for spilling coffee on themselves. This is not the case with many other countries, including those that currently offer some flavour of government health care.

It would take the combination of universal health care along with a society that supports and embraces the idea that common sense is non-existent for the hypothesis proposed by sceagles to come true. The sliding slope argument is a fair one that has often been proven to be a valid theorem time and time again throughout history. Simply dismissing it as "fearmongering" is a bit silly in my opinion.

One small group I do find amusing are the people who will sidle up to a person and cough loudly if someone is smoking anywhere near them but have no problem smoking pot so that everybody within 100 feet can smell it. Personally I find the smell of pot smoke much worse than cigarettes.

And incense. The guy at the Macarthur BART station who sells incense should go to prison for life. The piss odor under the overpass is much preferable to his wares.

As someone who calls himself a libertarian, I should be disgusted at all of the anti-smoking laws that keep getting passed - but deep in my heart, I know that the world is a more tolerable place with less smoking.

I also know that these measures were instrumental in getting me to quit 11 years ago. When I lived in NYC, I could smoke in my office (I had a private office with its own ventilation unit), in bars/clubs (where I did a good portion of my work), and of course in my apartment.

Once we moved to CA, my office was located in an open warehouse, so smoking was verboten. I couldn't smoke at clubs or restaurants. My home was now "our home" and H made it clear that while my smoking would be tolerated, it certainly wasn't appreciated.

Since smoking was no longer something I did while doing something else, I had to make a conscious decision whether or not I wanted to stop what I was doing to go outside and smoke. That didn't last long.

So I'm conflicted, ambivalent, and but ultimately secretly happy with the current state of no-smoking laws.

I hate inside smoking. I always have. Outside smoking doesn't bother me one bit.

I do not care for smoking, a lifelong non-smoker, the only one in my family.
Inside, horrible. Outside, since I am a non-smoker, it matters not, the wind will change in whatever direction I stand or sit so I will always get smoke in the face. It must be some form of wacky universal punishment for me, but it always happens.

For the record, I do not think smoking is a culteral thing to be solely identified as being a French trait. I am surprised that the bans are happening outside the US, however. Duh, there are non-smokers, even in France and Italy. ;-)

Yes, and that is a valid reason to support it. In fact, that's the only reason we should support governmental impositions on freedom, because the specific imposition benefits us.

Not exactly on point, but in the slippery slope direction:

Here is a man who was denied a work visa in New Zealand because he was overweight and a potential burden to their national health care program. He lost went and then was allowed in. Presumably Samoans are not allowed to move there.