I didn't actually plan for the site to go completely dark for the weekend, but Kate and I were off at a wedding for the weekend, and wound up not actually having regular Internet access, so I couldn't post any of the weekend things I didn't get around to scheduling before I left. I'm sure this ruined many a weekend...
The wedding and reception was in a VFW hall in New Hampshire, and when we got back to Kate's parents' afterwards, we all took showers and changed clothes to get rid of the cigarette smell. As I type, my good winter jacket is in the wash, along with Kate's, because they still reeked today.
Back in the late 90's, when various states started banning indoor smoking at restaurants and bars, I had some sympathy for the smokers and businesspeople who argued against the bans. I wasn't convinced that the health effect of "secondhand smoke" was really strong enough to justify banning smoking in public, particularly not if tobacco sales in general were still going to be legal.
Ten-ish years later, though, I have to say, I really don't miss that smell. To hell with libertarian principles-- it's worth a little loss of freedom to have my clothes not smell like death the morning after a night out...
I thought this was libertarian principles. If environmental tobacco smoke is indeed harmful, then your right to smoke stops at my nose.
The tricky bit comes when you talk about employees. It's not just for an employer to require an employee to be subjected to ETS. "Quit and work somewhere else?" Perhaps, but right now, the labour market is semi-regulated. For a libertarian (which I'm not), surely it would be better to attack than than to waste time trying to defend smoking.
It's kind of like all that government aid which went to help rebuild the damage done by the boxing day tsunami. If you think that tax is theft, then by all means argue that. But given that we, rightly or wrongly, have tax, surely spending it on that is better than a lot of the wasteful crap that governments would otherwise spend your money on.
Attack the real problem rather than trying to defend the indefensible.
The lack of cigarette smoke everywhere (except for the odd smoker outside an office building during lunch hour) was the single nicest thing about LA when I visited in 2001. It was a marked contrast to Denmark where most smokers think it is their right to bother others with their smoke -- and any safe haven for the non-smokers would be a trespass on smokers' personal freedom :)