I suspect that there are two reasons why balcony smoking isn’t permitted.

1. If you fail to close your balcony door suffciently, your smoke may enter the room, rendering useless for the next person who expects a non-smoking room.

2. If you are smoking on your balcony, other guests who are on their balcony or who have their balconies’ open may have to deal with your smoke.

First with airports, its a nightmare to (especially on a connecting flight) to have to go out past security and back in. Only a handful of airports (Atlanta for one) still provide smoking areas inside security. Is it too difficult to build an outside area at these locations? Sure it may be loud, but there is nothing worse checking in, waiting for your flight without the option of going to smoke. Go outside? Well if your up for the mile long walk and tram ride at airports like Las Vegas, Orlando or Dallas, i’d rather suffer.

Hotels are understandable, but seriously all these non-smoking hotels drive me out. If I cannot smoke in the room, I’m not staying there. Its pretty simple: Book a non-smoking room if you want one and make that floor non-smoking. I highly doubt people smell cigarette smoke on the next floor up. I especially despise Marriott and Disney’s “No smoking on the Balcony” rule, which is outright ridiculous. It’s an OUTSIDE area. If you cannot smoke OUTSIDE of your room, why go down 10 flights to smoke outside!?!?

The one thing I notice most folks don’t pay any attention to when they say smoking should absolutely be allowed in bars since bar patrons don’t care about what they put into their bodies anyway is what about the people who work in bars? Okay…a lot of folks who work as bartenders and waiters tend to smoke, but I’m guessing there are fewer of them than there used to be. And what about the live musicians? This really concerns me since I am one of them. I have never smoked a cigarette – not even to try one as a teenager. My parents smoked when I was a kid and I’ve always felt they’re gross and disgusting. But I have a Hobson’s choice: make money as a musician by going into smoky bars and subjecting myself every night to smelly, stinky smoke that makes me sick to my stomach (and wait for the lung cancer or heart disease to strike someday); or try to make a living doing something else I don’t care to do.

If I had my way, I’d live in a smoke-free apartment building. I’m sick of cigarette smell wafting into my apartment. Unfortunately, such buildings don’t exist in my area because no one wants to discriminate against others or tell them what they can or can’t do in their own home. of not wanting to discriminate against others that means I have to deal with mess until I can afford to buy.

I don’t think all apartment buildings should be smoke-free (that would be discriminatory), but I do think I should have the option of choosing to live in a smoke-free building.

I have to disagree with the notion that smokers are the majority in bars. Simply not true. It just appears (or appeared) that way because it only takes a few cigarettes to completely pollute a room.

I also think there is a trend in adult smoking patterns. In states that have banned public smoking the longest, the percentage of adults who smoke dropped significantly.

Finally, its been well discussed in the media that smoking has increasingly become the purview of the poorer, less educated segment of the popuation. Whenever tax increases on tobacco are proposed, there are always loud complaints that such tax increases unfairly tax the poor and disadvantaged since they are more likely to smoke.

Since poor and less educated people are less likely to travel, the travel industry is more likely to be made up of nonsmoking customers. In other words, even if 1/4 of the adult population really does still smoke, a significant segment of that 1/4 are not on planes, in hotels/restaurants, or renting cars. They just can’t afford it. Most of their disposable income goes toward buying more cigarettes.

No one suggests that most smokers don’t understand the smell and other consequences of smoking. Calling people idiots hardly advances the conversation. The reason for banning smoking in bars isn’t about customers but rather the employees, many of which are women, and their health.

But in any event, we are mixing issues. One is the business decision of hotels banning hotels compared with the law banning smoking in a given place. With regards to the business decision, since I neither own a hotel, nor other travel enterprise, I will defer to the wisdom of the owners of those businesses. I don’t think that I am in a position to second guess their business decision

By the same token, here in California the legislature banned smoking in bars. At that point, any analysis of majority or minority customers is irrelevant. Its the law, follow it.

Yes, smoking and smokers are becoming somewhat “extinct” but a person has the right to smoke. We tried to get rid of alcohol back in the Roaring 20s and that didn’t work!