HEART BEAT: Two More Cents on Tobacco

I think restaurants should allow smokers to smoke.  I also think that the entrances to all restaurants that allow smoking should be plastered with warning signs about the dangers of smoke, second-hand smoke, and anything else that reminds patrons that what they are doing is harmful. 
A 2007 study reported in the “American Journal of Preventive Medicine” observed that conspicuously large and graphic warnings on packages of cigarettes are much more effective than the diminutive print on most packages manufactured in our country.  If you’ve ever travelled to Germany, you know how graphic warning labels can be—both on packages and on signs of stores that sell cigarettes.  Let’s go for baroque in our restaurants.
I know what some of you are thinking.  One problem is that for restaurants to allow smoking, they have to subject workers to second-hand smoke.  No problem!  The way to fix that is to have all workers in smoking establishments sign a medical waiver that documents their decision to place their health at risk for minimum wage, or perhaps a little more, depending. 
While we’re at it, maybe insurance companies can exclude all smoking-related diseases from the policies of people who choose to ruin their health, and their children’s.  Or charge lots more.
When I worked in a textile factory in the olden days, smokers smoked on the job.  I was jealous of them.  Routines in the factory were tight.  We had to be toting creels, unpacking boxes, tying knots, or helping somebody else tie knots.  We got two fifteen-minute breaks and one thirty-minute meal break.
Our bosses knew that withdrawal from tobacco during work hours would hinder productivity, so there were ashtrays arranged strategically all over the place.  Sometimes, when I was weary from a graveyard shift, I would hang out with smokers and pretend to be one, just so I could have an additional break.  I didn’t even have to hold a cigarette.  The smoke blurred the lines of distinction.
Did I know that my choice was reckless?  Well, I was young.  It took exposure to environmental mold to provoke full-blown asthma, but who knows how much the second-hand smoke I inhaled in various workplaces, and in my own home growing up, came into play.  I recall with sentimental irony another job I had laying out and pasting up obituaries, reeling from the smoke that was once ubiquitous to newspaper offices.
Restaurants that allow smoking should also card everyone who enters.  Adults have the right to ruin their health, and they have the right to ruin the health of workers who agree to secondhand exposure to miscellaneous carcinogenic toxins.  But not one citizen has a constitutional right to take children into establishments that allow smoking.
Nobody under 18 should be allowed to enter a restaurant that allows smoking.  If a restaurant allows both alcohol and smoking, nobody under 21 should be allowed in either.  Shouldn’t family values include the health of our precious little ones?  If Daddy were alive, would I sue him?