Councilmembers:

Has this issue been brought to your attention by a clamoring of the people? Or was it brought by a group of special interest advocates with slick pr materials and scary statistics? I'd bet on the latter.

Why on earth do we--in the year 2001--find it necessary to treat one in four of our citizens as if they are worth less than the rest? They pay more taxes. They're our friends, our family, our co-workers, people we see in church, but they are treated like murderers--as if a tiny whiff of tobacco smoke is going to chase us down and rip our lives away.

My question to you is a simple one, and it shouldn't require a lot of thought. Why can we not allow SOME restaurants/bars, etc. to be smokefree and SOME to permit smoking? Smokers are well-represented in the waitstaff of these establishments, probably even over-represented, and those people do not like what you're doing "for their own good."

It makes no sense at all to protect smokers who happen to wait tables out of a job, which is happening all over the country. Twenty-seven people out of work at one bar in San Jose, twenty-one at a restaurant in San Diego, eighteen at a restaurant in Duluth, more than 1700 documented people out of work in California last year alone, and more than 1000 fewer dine-in restaurants than they would have had if the government had left them alone.