I smoked for 20 years. I quit cold turkey 6 years ago after an illness. Hubby still smokes...outside. I have no issue with having a beer at a smoking bar. People are generally respectful where I live and ask if it bothers you. I always consent because it’s a dog bar too and they put up with my mutts.
I never want to have to quit anything like tobacco ever again. My doctor told me that it was harder to break than opioid addiction. So God bless anyone still struggling with it. I certainly don’t want to be a reason for them to climb on a high horse and defend an ever vanishing public smoking establishment.
It definitely is harder to quit smoking than quitting opioids. Been there done that on both counts. Doctor prescribed of course. I found the entire habit of smoking to be as hard to quit as weaning off the nicotine. It’s almost ritualistic to always make sure I had my smokes, a back up pack, and a lighter that wouldn’t run out while I was out of the house. Then there’s the whole process of organizing my space with the ashtray and going through the motions of lighting one up. Heck, just thinking about it and typing this out, gave me a twinge of wanting a smoke even though there’s no way I would go there now.
I never could quit cold turkey. I managed to quit many times for months at a time using several different methods; one even involved a timer which beeped to tell me when I could smoke one. When I got down to 2 or 3 per day I quit the rest of the way but it was still hell for a few days. The very last time I used chew so I only had to quit the habit of lighting up. That was hard all by itself. Not a lot of chew; just enough to take care of the nicotine withdrawal but not enough to need to spit all the time. After a year of that I was able to quit the chew with the help of nico lozenges, gum, and the patch losing the gum first, then the patch, then finally the lozenges (which I used in the same spot I would park the chew) which I cut back on a little per day until I got down to 2 or 3 then quit once again the rest of the way going through hell and back. Physically the chew is harder to quit because the nicotine gets up to a certain level once a pinch is parked between the gums and cheek and stays there whereas smoking looks more like a heartbeat on a monitor. It goes way up when we smoke then gradually goes down until we crave another and can find the time to smoke one then it starts back up again over and over all day like that. I would smoke 5 cigs with coffee in the morning checking my email and what not before I did anything else just to get my nicotine level up to where I wanted/needed it.
Someone mentioned bars being a privately owned entity and while that is true; they are open to the public. The laws are different in each state but here in AZ the private clubs like the VFW, Eagles, Legion, Elks, etc. can still allow smoking. I only know of one in which the members voted to ban it and that was an Elks in a generally well to do area. Bars being open to the public are under the same laws that a library or restaurant would be. Most owners were happy to comply with the no-smoking laws because it meant more money in their pocket for less maintenance and cleaning plus the time and effort involved in doing it. Pool tables stopped being burned as well as wooden bar tops and carpeting. No more cig butts in the urinals and on and on like that. Just a couple of buckets of sand and a kitty litter type scooper outside to contend with once or twice a week depending on the number of smokers who frequented the place.