Originally Posted by
UA1K_no_more
We already have "Smokers' Lounge" and "airports that allow smoking" threads in TravelBuzz.
What exactly is it that can't be accomplished in those threads instead of creating a new forum for a topic that only generates ~60 posts per year in the most popular thread?
Uh, no, you don't. "Smokers' Lounge" was locked almost as soon as it was started and the Travel Buzz mods have said they won't re-open it.
As far as "Airports that Allow Smoking" is concerned, it would be completely off topic there to discuss hotels, restaurants, car rental agencies, etc.
Where you can smoke is often a very confusing issue for travelers. For example, in Israel I can smoke on any outdoor railway platform -- but not inside most restaurants (legally, not inside any but some owners in Arab villages allow it). On the other hand, when I visited St Louis I was surprised to find that while I could smoke in restaurants it was forbidden to smoke on an outdoor train platform.
In Florida (at least as of the last time I was there) I could not smoke inside any place that called itself a bar or a restaurant but I could smoke if it deemed itself a "sports bar".
I do want to be able to smoke but I don't want to break the law. It would be very helpful if, before I go to a city for the first time, I could come to this forum and find out where smoking is or is not prohibited.
I do not post in or read the heavy majority of forums on FT. Unless there is a sudden outbreak of peace, it is very unlikely that Emirates is going to start flying out of TLV, so that forum is useless for me. I don't own a pet and my children are in their 30s, so the forums dedicated to those topics don't help me.
In fact, almost all of my posts are in 13 forums and those are the ones I subscribe to and can be found on the "My Flyer Talk" page. The others are basically invisible to me. I am in no way hurt because they exist. In fact, when I was on Talk Board I lead the fight for two of them (Religious Travel and Budget Travel) even though I am not particularly religious nor do I travel on a tight budget). These issues were important for some FlyerTalkers and the fact that they were unimportant for me didn't mean they caused me any problems by existing.
Please tell me what problems a Smokers Forum would cause you -- especially if you do not subscribe to it and thus it doesn't appear on your "My Flyer Talk" page.