When was the last time you changed your mind about something?

Were you ever on one side of an issue, political or otherwise, and someone convinced you that you were wrong? What was that like?

Part of being open minded is being able to change your mind, right? I definitely have a few deeply held values that are not open to change at this point, but when it comes to the best way to exercise those values in the world, well, I like to think that I'm open to suggestions, anyway.

One thing I changed my mind about, relatively recently, was laws banning smoking in bars. When the smoking ban was first instituted in New York, I thought it was stupid and obnoxious. Generally I like Mayor Bloomberg, but c'mon, no smoking... in bars?... in New York?

People don't go to bars to be healthy.

There seems to be an unhealthy obsession with "health" out there these days (goes along with the "security"obsession, I guess), and there are still governmental manifestations of that obsession that get on my nerves.

However.

I've recently had the opportunity to hear a number of bartenders talk about their thoughts on the smoking ban, and it's been eye-opening. Somehow the fact that the smoking ban is basically a workplace safety law had never really sunk in with me before. I had thought of it as a law intended to protect patrons, who after all, choose to go into bars. Sure, the law protected bartenders too, but they chose to work there, and most of them smoked anyway.

The bartenders made me realize a number of things. First, there is a huge difference, in terms of health effects, between being a patron at a smoky bar for a few hours, and being a long-term, career bartender who works long shifts in a smoky bar several days a week. I won't go into the gory details, but let me just say... yech.

Second, some bartenders thought they became smokers as a result of working in a smoky bar. When they got out of work, they found themselves craving more smoke.

Third, what if smoking were allowed in all the workplaces in other fields that cater to customers? Is everyone who works in those fields just supposed to suck it up, literally, or else go find another field to work in? That's what was being asked of bartenders.

Some bartenders didn't like the law initially, because they feared their bar would go under, or that they would lose tips (neither of which happened). Others did like the law, although some were afraid they would lose their job if they said so.

Now, almost all of the bartenders liked it, and they didn't want smoking to be a choice that management could make on their behalf anymore. Legal smoking in bars would create pressure on all the other bars to allow smoking.

Which makes sense to me now. We don't say "Well, hey, if people work in a factory that doesn't filter toxic chemicals out of the workplace because the company will make more money that way, that's their choice." We make a law, no toxic chemicals in the workplace. We make a decision as a society that we want poisoning your employees to be off the table as a competitive advantage. Seems fair to me.

So, I think I was wrong about the smoking ban before. I have a friend who had long insisted that I was wrong about it, and when I told her that I had at last changed my mind, she said, "Finally. God, you're stubborn."