Was it ever ILLEGAL TO BAN smoking in restaurants or other businesses or rental apartments?

My county bans all smoking in restaurants.

Think of it as similar to drinking alcohol. Cities and towns have been legally banning the drinking of alcohol in certain places for a long, long time. Smoking is not essentially different. Stores and restaurants are public places, even if privately owned; and are regulated for health and safety purposes. It would be much harder to prohibit smoking or drinking in homes, as these are not open to the public; but it can be done: the prohibitions on the use of certain illegal drugs is a case in point.

There is NO Constitutional right to smoke! Just as there is no Constitutional right to use cocaine.

There is a strong legal tradition of landowner rights. In one's personal home or place of business, it has always been 100% legal to set rules as to the conduct permitted within - including the right to forbid any person from smoking. It would have been rare for anyone to make such a rule prior to the 1960s, but that rule could be made and would be perfectly legal.

Indeed, such rules did exist even before the health hazards of smoking were known - in many places, for instance, schools (public or private) could ban students or even teachers from smoking on school grounds, and certainly most if not all gas stations would forbid smoking due to the fire hazard. Perfectly legal.

The exception would be the more highly regulated fields of being a "common carrier." Where there is a worry about a monopoly over certain industries (such as travel by bus, plane or boat, or staying at a hotel/inn) in a geographical area, usually such common carriers might be prohibited from enacting rules that would have the effect of forbidding a person from taking advantage of that service, because the service was given a monopoly (or near monopoly) to serve the public at large. In that narrow case, it may have been illegal for such industries not to make some accomodation for smoking, such as to have a specific area where it was permitted, even if it was forbidden in most places.

When you talk about renting, there's a split of authority - the person who rents the apartment is treated, by law, as the "owner" because of their leasehold agreement. However, the person who rents out the apartment could impose rules via the rental agreement contract - and the renter would be bound by that contract. Again, it would have been rare, but a prohibition against smoking clause would be legally enforcable in such a contract, under the bargained-for-value theory - that is, if the person signing the contract didn't agree, they could bargain for what they did want, or go elsewhere to find what they wanted. Of course, if that clause was NOT in the contract (and a "pro-smoking" clause was also not in it), then it would be up to the person who paid the rent to decide whether smoking was permitted or forbidden and under what circumstances.

So on the whole, I would say it was never against the law for someone to ban smoking from their own personal property. Permitting smoking was merely the default position, in the absense of any other rule made by someone with authority to make it - which is still the legal position today (it's just that the government has chosen in many cases now to forbid smoking.)

I have thoroughly studied the PPS (public place smoking) regulations of India, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Thailand,South Africa and Bangladesh. Each of these regulations define some areas and places as "Public Place banned for smoking". The scope of the definition varies from country to country though. For example: open roads and streets are :non smoking" in Hong Kong but not so in Bangladesh. Parks and gardens are "non smoking" in Bangladesh but not so in Pakistan. However, each of these regulation say that the Government can any time declare an area or place as "non smoking" to protect public health. They also say the administrators or owners of privately owned places can decide whether or not to allow smoking inside their places (unless that place is already declared non smoking by the regulation). Therefore, any hotel or restaurant or pub or bar can be declared "smoking" or "non smoking" or can have "segregated smoking non smoking sections" as per the wish of the owner - provided they have not already been declared non smoking by state regulation. e,g, a restaurant in Ireland can't declare itself non smoking because that would contradict with state law. Don't forget to place clear, legible signs or identifiers to let people know whether the place has been declared a smoking or non smoking or segregated. That's a must.

I live in Jersey and smoking is banned everywhere. you can't smoke in public places suc as department stores, resturants, bars, shopping malls, fast food joints, and just about any other place you can imagine except your own house and in a publie area were smoking is banned you have to be 50 feet from the building to lite up. the only place you are allowed to smoke is in the casinos which is'nt fair but there a state money maker and when it comes down to it, it's all about politics

I........AM........NOT.......AN......ANIMAL, IM JUST A SMOKER