How good imposing a smoking ban is for our health isn't quite clear. That opinion seems to change. That it is an economic blow to businesses is clear-cut. Do businesses need lawmakers playing nanny to adults, requiring bars, restaurants and businesses to impose a smoking ban?       

Many Delaware Countians choose their restaurants carefully, asking if a bar or restaurant has a non-smoking section. If a restaurant does boast a non-smoking section, then smoke eaters, glass partitions and every other means available should be employed. The onus should be placed on the business-owner. Face it, instituting laws is easy. Enforcing them is difficult and expensive.

The U.S. Surgeon General has concluded that secondhand smoke is harmful to health, but it has one certain built-in safety feature: We can smell it and see it. People who frequent bars and business that allow smoking can make the choice to do so on their own. Employees who apply for jobs in such establishments know going in what type of environment they ask to be employed in. Both segments can vote with their feet and their wallets by frequenting and working for bars, restaurants and businesses that go smoke-free voluntarily.

The choice to go smoke-free should be made by individual business owners. That decision can go two ways. They gamble that patrons who wish to smoke will go elsewhere or they may find themselves filling a needed business niche that may bring them further trade. Either way, the gamble should be theirs to make.

Ontario, Canada, tracked how badly a smoking ban there has affected business. The government enacted its smoking ban in all public buildings in 2006. The ban extends to bingo halls, bars, restaurants and casinos. Businesses and individual smokers face hefty fines for defying the ban.

Last year the Fair Air Association of Canada reported that in other Ontario communities that enacted similar smoking bans prior to the provincial ban, bar sales dropped between 18.7 percent and 24.3 percent. Mychoice.ca, an organization funded by the tobacco industry, estimated Ontario's ban would result in annual revenue losses for the casino industry of $250 million to $350 million.

Ontario's casino losses may have been other casinos' gains. Would eliminating smoking in Chester Harrah's be other state casino gains? We must not force state businesses to take a hit because they want to play family physician.

We know smoking is harmful. We know secondhand smoke is unhealthy. Yet cigarettes are still legal. Those who smoke make the decision to do so. Non-smokers are free to make similar decisions about where they want to spend their money.

It would be hypocritical of government to halt smoking in bars and restaurants when it taxes the very product it seeks to ban. If lawmakers want to ban smoking, perhaps they could begin by agreeing to no longer collect taxes on cigarettes.

Government's role should be limited to making certain the public is informed of the risks of secondhand smoke, but government should not become an economic impediment to thousands of Delaware County small business owners.