Logic Goes Up In Smoke
Last week, the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee released a study that links the ban on smoking in bars to an increase in drunk driving fatalities. The idea is that people need to drink and smoke so badly that they’ll drive to a city that doesn’t have a smoking ban to get their drink on and suck down a few lung bullets. Ultimately, the goal of this paper is to push the need for a statewide smoking ban in Wisconsin, but the way its being reported is pretty damn irresponsible.
I get it. People dig a smoke with their beer. They go together like peanut butter and chocolate. Even so, is it really worth it to risk destroying your life and the lives of others? I still find it shocking that people who want a bullet with their beer don’t just stay at home. From what I’ve seen, most bars are ignoring the smoking ban anyway. They’re finding that it makes more sense for them to eat the fine, as they make more money off of the extra business to more than cover the cost of the fine.
If you want to read the article, you can find it here, but the whole thing can be summed up in this statement: “It still appears that the positive health effects of smoking bans outweigh the negative, he says, but the real conclusion is that a universal smoking ban would eliminate the danger of people trying to avoid the individual bans.”
