Ditka A Smokin' Debater!

Chicago, my beautiful hometown, is deciding whether or not to ban smoking inside of bars and restaurants, among other places. Good thing local expert Mike Ditka was kind enough to share his disinterested opinion.

"Don't impose the will of the few on the lives of the many," said Ditka, who drew a strong reaction from the audience when he used an expletive to describe the proposed smoking ban.

Ditka's testimony stretched more than 30 minutes during a nearly 3-hour session, the first in a series of public hearings to discuss the latest anti-smoking moves that could result in some of the toughest prohibitions in the nation.

Harkening back to his days on the high-school debate team, Ditka relied on the principles of formal logic when he found himself forced to speak extemporaneously without the benefit of proof, corroborating information or anything resembling evidence to support his point.

"If you take this revenue away from restaurants, you are going to lose a lot of jobs," Ditka said.

Meanwhile, back in the real world, let's see how New York made out with their smoking ban.

Andrew Hyland, an associate professor at the University of Buffalo's Roswell Park Cancer Institute, said studies of New York's ban on smoking in restaurants and bars, first imposed in 1995, showed that 22,000 more employees now work in restaurants in that city, an 18 percent increase. He said his research was geared primarily toward the true economic impact of a smoking ban.

"Data from multiple, objective sources all indicate that the law worked--the air got cleaner, people supported it, and it was not bad for the hospitality economy[.]"

Blow it out your ass, Coach.