Las Vegas Sun

Is living itself worth the risk of slowly dying? Sheesh - if we stop doing everything except eating exactly right, exercising the precise amount, and minimizing ALL self-inherent risk, we might live an extra five years ... Or we might get hit by a bus today. Everything in moderation, folks, because immortality is an impossible goal to chase.

Hey, Uddeboda:

1) Take an English lesson. Your spelling and grammar is embarrassing.

2) The ENTIRE EARTH will eventually succumb to environmental issues -- namely, the expansion of the sun into a red giant, swallowing up the first three planets of the solar system -- so what is your point?

Oh, I know ... Just another anonymous Las Vegas hater or clueless Internet troll with too much time to stir the sh*t but no time to edumacate yourself.

"Cigarette smoking is an irresponsible and a very inconsiderate act of selfish individuals. Proctecting (sic) their civil freedoms to smoke denies many of us that choose not to smoke our civil freedoms as well."

This is the most passive-aggressively self-centered slippery-slope argument for banning smoking in PRIVATE BUSINESS that I have ever heard.

THIS IS NOT A CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE. First, tobacco is a legal product. Second, and critically, in cases of legal activity, civil rights apply only to PUBLIC PLACES and a restaurant or bar IS NOT A PUBLIC PLACE.

Anyone, including government or any of you, telling a business owner what LEGAL ACTIVITY they may or may not permit within the walls of their PRIVATE BUSINESS is akin to the government or any of us choosing to visit your home and demanding, for the few hours I may spend there, that you are COMPELLED to make it more comfortable to ME. It may be more "civil" for you to do so, but do you want a law forcing you to do so?

I am a non-smoker who watched my father die of lung cancer. But tobacco is a legal product, and restaurants and taverns are private legal businesses. If you do not like the food, the wait staff, the music they play, the alcohol consumption, the crowd they serve, the smoke ... GO ELSEWHERE. You do not have the right to visit "Tavern A" just because you like it, and then compel the owners to make it more hospitable for YOU. The only way you can compel them to do so is to stop going there and vote with your money.

Please, take responsibility for your own needs and choices, perhaps by patronizing some of the many fine restaurants that do not permit smoking by policy, not law. Otherwise, you look terribly desperate in your need to control others.

Alternatively, you should put your energy into trying to ban tobacco, because until that happens, you are all going to be terribly uncomfortable that some people still choose to live their lives in ways you wish they wouldn't. And that, friends, is a metaphor for the entire history of Las Vegas and America's view of it at large.

acresall, you are obviously unaware that a private business has the right to set any policies it wants. My business (which is non-smoking, by the way) does not exist to serve everyone who might want to come inside, it exists because I have an idea of the market I'd like to serve. I am under no obligation to make my business more palatable to your singular needs and desires, just as you are under no obligation to spend your money with my business. Government has no business compelling me how to accomodate you particularly when it comes to a legal behavior such as tobacco use. To be clear: You do not have the "right" to choose a business and then shape the practices of that business to fit your narrow desires. No tavern operator owes you or anyone a smoke-free meal as you can have those at another eatery, or, perhaps, the comfort of your own home. The only vote you have is with your money - period. I suggest you put your money where your mouth is and open a smoke-free tavern.

Tobacco is a legal product. Bars and taverns are places for adults. Adults are free to make their own choices as to which bars and taverns they visit. Until tobacco is made illegal, this ban is overreaching and unconstitutional. And I am a non-smoker. A rational, freedom loving non-smoker who believes business should make the decision.

Once again the peanut gallery chimes in. I sold two houses in Summerlin to move Downtown, and anyone who comments on what a "ghetto" Downtown is has never visited or has ill-conceived and ill-informed notions that would best be served by educating thyself.

Wow, the SUV Apologists will even comment on THIS story? According to "cctrjkrfan"'s logic, the story should have simply read, "Human dead."

And people forget kids in cars EVERYWHERE, not just Las Vegas.

Nevada (and Las Vegas) did extremely well depending on taxing our primary industry rather than our residents for six-plus decades ... until our population exploded. We need to reduce valley population by about 30-percent so we can get back to the balanced standard of living Las Vegans enjoyed previously.

"Americans need to be more energy aware, drive less, drive more efficient vehicles, and think about the kind of world we'd like our grandkids to inherit."

Americans? What about the Chinese? Energy policy is far too politicized. Develop it, use it, move on!

As long as we pursue the inane policy of "energy conservation," prices for oil-derived energy sources will continually increase. Oil is a limited resource and will continue to get more scarce. Hence, price increases.

Oil and energy conservation -- and all the rhetoric that goes along with it -- is a political position, not anything realistic on which to base policy.

It would be wiser to use up oil reserves as quickly as possible while researching and developing other sources of energy so that the pending transition would be (relatively) quick and painless. "Conserving oil" (for whom, I ask?) will only mean a long, painful and expensive withdrawal from our reliance on it.

Use it up and move on!