Smoking in Restaurants

Re “Council Kills Second Effort to Ban Restaurant Smoking,” March 25:

Although I support the right of smokers to puff away in private, and I support the right of business owners to run their enterprises as they see fit, I am nevertheless appalled by the number of Los Angeles restaurant owners who are falling all over themselves to accommodate their smoking customers at the expense of the health of their nonsmoking patrons.

No doubt they have been brainwashed by tobacco industry soothsayers who have convinced them that if they ban smoking in their restaurants the smokers will go elsewhere and that if, on the other hand, they merely offer a so-called “nonsmoking” section (usually reached by walking through the smoking section) the nonsmokers will stay.

ART VERITY

Van Nuys