OK, I get the idea behind restricting smoking in restaurants and other public places. And I can see the value of "no smoking" in office buildings and bowling alleys and even bars, although not being a big bar person I suppose the ambiance will slip a bit in a few of those spots. But eliminating smoking in tobacco and cigar shops, as WFAA reports? Is that some kind of weird, johnny-come-lately April Fool’s joke?
Good grief: The people in those places are choosing to wander in and buy the stuff, it’s not impacting those of us who don’t smoke, and if you can’t smoke in a place that sells smokes … Surely, the council could better spend its time subsidizing another downtown developer or pondering a funding scheme for a second convention center hotel instead of cracking down on places that sell tobacco products? Why not just ordinance them right out of business, if that’s the goal, rather than allowing businesspeople to open the businesses but then blocking them from legally letting customers sample the product? Again, I don’t have a problem with the smoking ban so far, but at some point, the council can’t spend all of its time telling those few of us who aren’t receiving gobs of city subsidy money how to run our businesses, too.
