The Voice

Hooray for Ken Vance’s no-smoking-in-restaurants movement! “The Colonnade” staff backs Vance on this one.

We surveyed eight local restaurants to find out about non-smoking sections. Three of the restaurants do not even have a non-smoking section: The Brick, Amici and Buffington’s. In this day in and age, wouldn’t you think these restaurants would have some area where non-smokers could sit so they don’t have a stream of cigarette or cigar smoke floating over their entrees, into their noses and sticking to their hair and clothes?

A number of Milledgeville restaurants do have non-smoking sections. But these non-smoking sections could still have those nasty secondhand smoke chemicals seeping into them if there aren’t two completely separate sections. Some restaurants have both sections, but they are about two feet apart. Come on, what’s the point?

There are over 4,000 chemical compounds in secondhand tobacco smoke. According to the American Cancer Society, 40 of these 4,000 chemicals can cause cancer. Non-smokers exposed to secondhand smoke take in nicotine and other compounds just as much as smokers do. (Now is that fair?)

Another thing, smoke stinks! Walk into some of the restaurants, and you’ll see! Some of them smell terrible. It is difficult to imagine how a meal in a stinky, thick smoke cloud could taste good, or taste at all for that matter.

Some Milledgeville restaurants claim that they are going to keep allowing smoke because they believe the majority of their customers are smokers, and they want to keep them happy. What about the non-smoking customers your restaurants are losing because they can’t eat in these places without coming out reeking of an ashtray or without taking in cancerous chemicals? What about the college students who don’t smoke? They do exist, you know. There are plenty of people, such as professors, other Georgia College & State University faculty and locals of Milledgeville, who would love to be able to go into these restaurants and enjoy appetizers and entrees without having to be sideswiped by thick clouds of cigarette and cigar smoke. Create a non-smoking section.
If a restaurant is too small for both sections, why not make the smokers go outside in the cold and do their puffing? Maybe it will help them cease their addiction. Why punish the non-smokers?

What Mr. Vance is talking about isn’t anything new or unrealistic.

In some parts of the country, nightclubs even have this no-smoking policy. You know when you paint the town one night and the next morning, you and your entire room are covered with that awful smell of bar (cigarette and alcohol smells blended together)? Wouldn’t it be nice if everyone out partying had to step outside to have their nicotine fix? Then you wouldn’t smell like a big ashtray with beer spilled in it. That would be nice.

Way to go, Julian’s! This was the only restaurant surveyed that was completely smoke-free. Two thumbs up for having a clean, healthy and smoke-free environment.

“The Colonnade” staff thinks local restaurants should take a step closer to make Milledgeville dining environments clean and healthy for everyone.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 30 2002. Filed under Our Voice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry