discussions on the smoking ban

i have just returned home after a jaunt at the hopleaf, a drinking establishment in my fair town of chicago. scott, sean and i got into a discussion on the smoking ban that is soon to take effect here and, since sean used to live in boston (which is now smoke-free), he knew something about it.

let me begin by saying i was anti-smoking ban. and let me also preface this by saying sean was in public health for 5 years. he totally smoked me in the argument (pun intended). and looking back on it, i really had no really good argument to stand on that wasn't based on my beliefs and feelings, which really pisses me off.

i am (was) against the smoking because i don't like people telling other people what they can't do. of course, i saw sean's point when he said no one's telling anyone NOT to smoke, they just can't do it in the bars anymore. but i am (was) against the smoking ban because i was thinking that chicago was cooler than to just follow the flock. i mean, all the other big cities have done it, LA, NY, Boston. but we're CHICAGO! we're run by the mob. and certainly no mobster is going to let some namby-pamby health freak tell us that we can't smoke in our hooch parlors anymore.

well, looking back at that argument.... sigh. it's not really a good point.

sean's points, on the other hand, were backed up by facts and data. of course, i want to see this data, but after scott reminded me that this was sean's job for the last half-decade, i groaned. if i would have remembered that, i wouldn't have decided to play "devil's dumb advocate" with sean in the first place.

but i'm always enlightened when i have conversations like this. it's not just polite conversation, or people just nodding their heads in agreement when they really don't feel the same way. yes, i may not have "won" the argument, but i saw his side (people who work in smoke-filled environments deserve as much freedom from potential lung cancer as the rest of us white collar boobs with office jobs) and (eventually) accepted it. sean's not one to back down, which is nice, since it's so hard to find people who really stand up for what they believe in, and have good hard fact to prove it, too. and the truth is hitting home as i sit here with this tickle in the back of my dry, scratchy throat from breathing in all of the smoke i had to inhale while vehemetly arguing that alcoholism has to be more dangerous than smoking (again, sean's stats proved me wrong).

we never got into name-calling or yelling. it was good, thorough discussion of both sides of the argument. we pissed scott off at one point (he called us both assholes), but that's as heated as it got. i come away wishing i had more reading and knowledge in my repertoire, but all i have are friends who smoke. the bottom line is i, too, will jump on the non-smoking band wagon. but at least i'll have facts to back up my reasoning. that, and a nicotine-smelling coat.