Do you think its right/fair for some cities to ban "public" smoking?!

Do you think its right/fair for some cities to ban "public" smoking?

I heard on the news this morning one city here in California was one step away from banning people from smoking outdoors of restaurants and in crowds of people, to me this seems a little un-fair because if you are outside than it would be easier to avoid the second hand smoke. Just my opinion.

It's utterly ridiculous.

When you compare the output of a smoker's second hand smoke to the continuous output of every car, truck and diesel engine in the city, the smoker's contributions to hazardous air quality is miniscule.

And when you consider the known deleterious health effects of diesel exhaust with the tenuous data about second-hand cigarette smoke - then look at the exposure of people in traffic around poorly maintained buses, trucks and other fume-spewing motor vehicles, any argument that smoking bans are a public health issue is specious at best.

All smoking bans are is an attempt at legislating behaviour. Some people find smoking disgusting (which it admittedly is), and want to ban that. If they were really, truly concerned about public health, they'd be banning exhaust producing vehicles, or at least requiring regular maitenance.

Anti-smoking laws are merely pandering to get votes.