High time for the nation to enforce the law

My friends and I celebrated International Women's Day on Monday by going to dinner at a restaurant near our office. While we were still looking at the menu, we suddenly found ourselves surrounded by cigarette smoke. More than a dozen men had just taken their seats at nearby tables and immediately lit up.

We abandoned our table by the window for another, but were soon assaulted by smoke from a nearby table. Looking around, I didn't see a single "No Smoking" sign in the restaurant, nor was there any division between smoking and non-smoking areas.

I knew there was no point in raising the matter with the restaurant's owner. I remember having lunch in the non-smoking section of another restaurant, where several customers were nonetheless smoking. The smokers refused to put out their cigarettes even when an attendant asked them to.