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I detest cigarette smoke as much as any other whiner, but I understand the slippery slope theory. If we invite a mob of people to dictate other people's personal habits in one category, where does it end?

Furthermore, much (not all) of the push for this kind of legislation comes from the resturaunt industry itself. Managers have fewer people who are willing to stink up their hair and clothes working the "smoking section", so they demand that certain employees work those stations. The employee in return tries to weasel out of doing that work and complains about whatever they can without getting fired. The problem isn't the patrons, as more and more resturaunts are doing a better job of keeping smoke from the non-smoking areas. It's managers not being able to staff the smoking sections, and owners tired of paying huge money to clean the air up and keep OSHA, EPA and the health inspector out of their wallets. Smokers are really damaging to more than other people's lungs - smoke sticks to everything and does horrible things to fabrics. But their damage is offset by the profits. Now if the very same people would dump nearly the same amount of money into the resturaunt without smoking, then instead of there invariably being an inbalance between the smoking and non-smoking sections, and empty tables in the smoking section because non-smokers refuse to have their Mesquite smoked steaks Marlboro smoked, all tables could be filled and better profitability.

Resturaunt owners, stuck with these problems, know that by banning smoking themselves, 25-30% of their revenue will go literally across the street, so they pretend that the city has a captive audience and that by merely eliminating smoking in all places, they won't lose customers to a shop that allows smoking.

The city council, responsible for keeping the budget, wants people to smoke because cigarettes bring in money, and cigarette smoking usually results in more alcohol sales, which adds to the city coffers too. But invariably, there are some liberty robbing nazis who are voted in by the "holier than thou" meddling constituancy, and behold! There is pressure from within to pass nonsense such as this.

Now that the city council has found out that the money isn't pouring in like they expected, they want to make it universal so money doesn't go literally across city boundaries.