SmokeFREE Ohio is a threat to the rights of businessmen. It is falling into the same category as the recent controversy regarding pharmacists stocking and selling contraceptives.
Ultimately, it is the right of the business owner to determine whether or not they allow smoking in their building just as it is the right of the business owner to determine what products they will and will not stock. Is the State allowed to tell a store that they cannot sell a specific brand of product? Is the State allowed to dictate the business owner's business model? Can the State tell a bar what they can and cannot have on tap?
This is no different. Ultimately, it falls under the problem of people believing they are entitled to a service. Consumers believe that they have a right to a service, and that therefore a business owner is required to provide it. This is quite silly and undermines the concept of a free market ' a business owner has the right to provide (or not provide) whatever service they want. It is the responsibility of the consumer, if they don't like the service provided, to go elsewhere.
In this case, consumers are upset because they want to be in a bar, but not in a bar where people smoke. The correct answer to this problem, however, is to wait for an entrepreneurial business owner to make their bar smoke-free of their own volition (and thus corner the market of people who don't want to be in bars with smoking), not to tell businessmen that they cannot run their business as they choose.
SmokeFREE Ohio threatens the rights of small business owners and encourages the deterioration of the free market economy by limiting the type and kind of service a business owner can provide.' Keith Miller is a junior psychology major.
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