As October 1st, all restaurants in Tennessee will be smoke free indoors unless they limit access to people 21+ at all times (includes restaurants with bars, chain and hotel restaurants). See www.smokefreetn.org or www.tennesseeanytime.org/govoffice/smokingban.html for more information.

Let me begin by saying I am not a smoker. Personally, I think smoking is the equivalent of putting your mouth over the exhaust pipe of a poorly tuned ’68 Chevy. So on one hand I think this is great. There is nothing I hate more then when someone lights up right next to me in a restaurant. This is why my wife and I usually avoid restaurants that allow smoking or have the most ill thought out smoking sections known to man.

On the other hand, I hate the fact that the government felt they had to step up and do it. I despise the way government takes control of everything..all the useless organizations, things they have their hands in, the ways they can try to scare people by saying the budget will be cut and health and education will suffer (even though it would have actually just been a smaller increase from last year than they wanted). But I digress. I think it should have been left up to the business owners to decide. Now I think the owners should have thought…Hey, you know smoking kills people and is annoying to our customers..perhaps we should ban it. But they didn’t. I jump off my political rant and just start to enjoy the clean air here.

Cheers.