"once again, we have a beautiful example of how binary/dualistic/either-or/two party thinking results in a solution that pleases one group and displeases another."

I quite agree but I wholeheartedly disagree with your conclusions, Charles.

The law should not be involved in telling a bar or restaurant owner, or any kind of business or home owner, what his or her policy must be regarding whether to allow cigarette smoking or not.

Let the public decide by determining which restaurants and bars it patronizes. Non-smokers can go to non-smoking establishments. Smokers can go to smoker-friendly establishments. The entire problem is the law being involved.

In any case, it doesn't matter to me. I smoke where I want, and the law be damned. If an establishment isn't courteous enough to leave out an ashtray, I consider that an invitation to leave my cigarette butts on the floor, or on a plate, or in a glass... Anywhere that it won't cause a fire.

If the owner then asks me to leave, I will leave. But you'd be surprised how many just look the other way!

The concept that smokers should have to "go outside" and catch pneumonia in the name of "public health" is cruel and bigoted. I do not cooperate with it.

I recently (well, last May) went to Los Angeles, California, a state where smokers have been placed under siege for years now. I lit up in restaurants all over the place. That was really fun because Californians are already so over-socialized to expect that everyone obeys their damn anti-smoker laws that when they saw me lighting up in a restaurant they turned their heads away with frightened looks on their faces. They seemed to think I was a psychopath! (As if I had lit up a joint or something illegal.) I loved inhaling and exhaling the wafting smoke and watching them all run for cover as if I'd pulled out a submachine gun in a schoolyard!

Smoking bans trigger craving, make the tobacco taste better, and bring the act of smoking clearly back into the realm of "speech" and disobedience to arbitrary authority.

Some people may have a "preference" not to be around other people's smoke. Fine! Nobody forces you to go out to someone else's restaurant or business. But to think it is a "right" to be able to tell other people what to do in their own businesses is a very extreme, authoritarian, concept, and deserves disobedience and resistance at every turn, on the battlefield of daily life.