Not satisfied with having won their battle against indoor smoking in Minnesota, anti-smoking zealots now say bar owners should not be allowed to build “smoke shacks” outside their establishments so that smokers might stay warm when they are forced to step outside to light up.
Touting the health benefits of the smoking ban, those opposed to the smoke shacks reckon, apparently, that no adult American should be allowed to: 1) make decisions regarding his or her property if such decisions involve smoking; and 2) spend time away from his or her home and simultaneously smoke in anything resembling comfort. Instead, they say that all that matters to them is reducing state-funded, smoking-related health care costs. Of course, many Minnesotans never asked to pay those costs in the first place.
Our state representative, Bob Gunther, R-Fairmont, got an amendment passed in the Minnesota House of Representatives that would allow smoking shacks. He and other proponents want to give bar owners a break, since they have suffered financially from the smoking ban.
The last we checked, cigarettes and other tobacco products are legal. Those who do not like this are running a piecemeal campaign to reduce and eliminate the products use without having to take the politically shaky position of recommending an outright ban. That’s not exactly the most courageous thing we’ve ever heard.
