Sorry for the not quite on topic comment but I really had to get that off my chest.
I'm sure it's inconvenient that you have to go outside and away from the doors to enjoy your habit, but if that's a problem then maybe you should have picked one that doesn't pollute so much.
When it's getting to the point where you don't just have to go outside, which is reasonable, or even go outside but avoid high traffic areas, but instead to go to this one specific spot outside, and there are people advocating banning smoking outdoors altogether it starts to get ridiculous.
I find it a strange comparison to the marijuana legalization movement.
EDIT: correction: they have actually banned smoking outside in certain places. (http://www.cnn.com/2011/US/05/23/new.york.smoking.ban/) So you can't smoke indoors. You can't smoke outdoors. But fuck 'em, they're smokers, so who cares.
I am grateful and amazed that smoking is so much less popular now. Back in the early 1980s a friend remarked that he liked runners parties: two hours after they started you could still see across the room. I hadn't thought it about, but he was correct that in most other circles there was still a lot of smoking.
I work in an office complex that prohibits smoking throughout all buildings and nearby, but provides a "smoking area" outside; unfortunately that area is right next to the path between my building and the next, so the smoke and smell inundates the path. I have to wonder how much they'd lose by simply banning it anywhere on the grounds. It's not like smokers are a protected class, or that there are any requirements to provide for them.
Even considering enshrining this as standard operating procedure (i.e. TPP) would be so disgusting as to be unthinkable if it weren't currently happening and championed even by the "liberal" wing of the US political body; people should be able to decide the rules in their own country, not corporate lawyers overseas interested in maximizing how much profit they can milk from a foreign population against their will. The previous thought is so obviously morally correct and self-evident it should not need to be said and yet it does need to be said, which is horrifying.
It's analogous to calling something "the Google" or "the Microsoft."
However, I don't think it's the fault of "the." Nobody thinks The New York Times or The Washington Post are government entities, for example.
This is a slow and cumbersome procedure with a low-ish chance of success, but it does have the merit that the senior management of the firm will become aware of your issue, and if you can make a good case that CoC membership is at odds with stockholders' long-term interests then their fiduciary duties will require them to consider the issue seriously.
