If the typical alcohol drinker could not resist spilling, splashing, and drooling on everyone in the vicinity, alcohol would have been banned from public places a long time ago.
the typical alcohol drinker can't - it's just the typical alcohol drinker is too fucking drunk to notice - perhaps not necessarily on an individual level, but i've never been in an environment (bar, party, camp fire, back yard, dinner table, you name it) where SOMEONE (or multiple someones) didn't get sloppy stupid drunk and spill booze.
there's also the fact that almost everyone in the country drinks, so there's a strong level of communal delusional bias going on with regards to turning a blind eye to the fact that alcohol is damn well near as damaging (and, i would argue, MORE damaging) than tobacco, and yet while there are some small groups half-heartedly dedicated to regulating or moderating some types of drunken activities, nobody treats booze as the life destroying plague drug that it is.
(and before you come up with some straw man argument about it and try to turn this into you railing against a position you invented for me, i do not support banning alcohol in any form, i'm just not an alcoholic like 90% americans are, so am not blind to its social impact and i find the hypocrisy in the social conversation to be ridiculous)
It's easy to paint this in terms of discrimination, as if an appeal to civil rights consciousness would help the cause. Smoking is hazardous to the smoker and people around the smoker. It's a public hazard and that is why we have governments.
alcohol is hazardous to the drinker and hazardous to the people around the drinker, and yet the idea of banning alcohol or public consumption is utterly absurd to most people.
the rank and blatant hypocrisy that people such as yourself display on this topic is hilarious.
I am a smoker myself, and I'll happily curb my habit in the interest of not harming other people for my enjoyment. It's called being a responsible citizen.
i'm also a smoker and i also have no problem not smoking in public places - that isn't remotely the point, and it has nothing to do with being a responsible citizen.
As for Denny's and IHOP, it's an established fact that smoking inhibits the taste. If restaurants are closing, it's not because smokers are avoiding them. It's more likely people can finally taste the food.
so wait, your argument is that those places only make money because smokers can't taste the food, except now they can taste the food and it's awful so they aren't going there, but they're not losing money due to smokers avoiding them?
i'm sorry, nothing you said here makes the damndest lick of sense.