I'm going to totally evade the question about how I feel or what's right or wrong, and just make an observation.
Many cities have passed smoking bans. In all of those cities, there has been an angry opposition to smoking bans. It's hard to say if opposition sentiment is a loud minority or a majority, but whatever the case, the cities pass the smoking bans anyway.
In the immediate wake of the smoking ban there is some small local news coverage about individual bars and restaurants having more or less traffic. The coverage might conclude that there has been a negative impact on restaurants/bars or it might not. The issue of smoker's rights is not covered at this stage, having already been totally ignored.
Within 6-9 months, no one cares anymore. It is accepted as a fact of reality. Smokers in some bars might smoke indoors while holding open the back door or otherwise "cheat", but by and large smoky bars and restaurants have ceased to exist, non-smokers don't care, smokers don't care, they go outside to smoke if they want to.
Within a few years, the idea that anyone could smoke in a restaurant or bar seems quaint and distant, like a memory not quite remembered right. Remember when all the bars used to be hazy and hard to see in it? Yeah, kinda, I guess? It's hard to really remember.
No city ever repeals a smoking ban after the fact.
So with that in mind, without actually making an argument for or against the merits of the ban itself, without actually talking about economic or business rights or smokers rights or any other argument on either side, without talking about the smell or second hand smoke... without actually addressing the issue--
--given that we already know that no one will care a year or two from now in your city, and no one will care a year or two from now in any city that passes it, is there even a discussion to be had here? It's so ephemeral. It's simply not going to be a thing a little while from now. It's not going to be an ongoing knock-down drag-out that goes back and forth for years or decades, the way most controversial policies do. My city passed a bar smoking ban around 2003 or 2004 or something, but I don't think any restaurants allowed smoking without a thick solid divider for maybe 8 or so years before that. I remember bars before the ban being hazy and smelly. I don't know if the ban has done anything, positive or negative. I just know the whole thing seems quaint when I hear people on the internet get fired up about it. That was so 10 years ago and absolutely no one where I live even thinks about it, let alone getting excitable enough to defend or attack it. It just is.
