Related to our earlier story of Calabasas, California banning nearly all smoking, even outside.
Associated Press – March 22, 2006:
With anti-smoking laws making it tougher for smokers to find a place to light up, members of the American Lithuanian Naturalization Club of Athol thought they had held on to a small sanctuary for smokers when a judge ruled that the town did not have the authority to extend a statewide ban on workplace smoking to the town’s private clubs.
But the state’s highest court overturned that on Wednesday, ruling that local boards of health can ban smoking in private clubs.
The Athol Board of Health, in passing the regulation, said private clubs should be bound by the same rules as commercial workplaces when it comes to protecting employees from secondhand smoke.
Who doesn’t do at least some work at home? I’m guessing the private home is the next anti-smoking battleground.
This puzzles me … I thought Big Tabacco had bought everyone off.
Smoking is healthier than fascism, as one of my friend’s t-shirts says.
Silly comments aside, this is all about the government relieving people of one more thing they previously had to be personally responsible for. It’s more politically popular to just ban smoking outright, than it is to tell people that if they choose to go to or work at a place where people smoke, they are responsible for the results of that choice.
These rules are not for the members of private clubs, but the employees!
Where liberalism and libertarianism part…
“These rules are not for the members of private clubs, but the employees!”
Re-read the article, this pertains to clubs and its members because the clubs have employees. It does not pertain solely to employees.
Here in Sweden we have since June 2005 a total ban for smoking indoors at clubs and restaurants. The main reasons for the legislation was that smoke can cause allergic reactions for some people and that it also impacts the health of the club/restaurant’s employees. I’m personally very positive to the ban, and it’s very nice to come home after a night out and not having to stink like an ashtray.
Glad your desire to not smell like an ashtray is more important than other people’s right to smoke.
A simple rule to follow: if you don’t want to be at risk of encountering second hand smoke, don’t work at or frequent places where people smoke. It’s not as if a bartender was only told after the fact that “oh by the way, customers smoke here.”
I’m a non-smoker, but I can’t support this ban. Since smoking is still a legal activity it seems draconian. Get those spineless politicans to give up their tobacco money, stop subsidizing tobacco growers and take some meaningful steps in smoker education, and then we’ll see.
This has gone past ridiculous, where are smokers supposed to smoke? Oudoor smoking bans are being seriously considered. Last time I checked, smoking was a legal activity. There should be places where smoker can smoke. I don’t have a problem with requiring good ventilation and/or a specific room for smokers but a ban on private clubs? What if it was a smoking club? Defending people from someone else’s smoke is one thing, defending them from their own smoke is insane.
>> This has gone past ridiculous, where are smokers supposed to smoke?
Hopefully nowhere.
My rights as a non smoker are regularly infringed upon by morons that continue to smoke. My rights to not be affected by your activities trump your ‘freedom and liberty’ claims every time, as it should be. You have no right to impose your smoking habits upon me… none.
If you don’t like the rules concerning smoking in a club, well you can just go smoke in some closet in your home for all I care, or go through withdrawal symptoms, or go cry to your mommy that ‘liberals’ won’t let you smoke in peace. But DO NOT try to impose your obnoxious dirty moronic ignorant bad habits upon me. I really couldn’t care less about your right to smoke in my presence.
I am not a smoker. I don’t like to be around smoke as much as anyone. However, just as non-smokers have a right to be smoke-free smokers have a right to enjoy a legal activity as long as they don’t hurt anyone else. The law should allow for smoking clubs and smoking areas. A complete ban is irrational. We have gone too far on the side of non-smoking to the point of stupidity.
Awake… seriously… what the hell is wrong with you? I have not once had a problem with smokers “imposing” on me. Mostly, because it’s easy to find out which bars and clubs are full of smoke and even easier to just not go there. Amazing. Most resturaunts have smoking and non-smoking sections, ask for non and get over the fact that somewhere, someone might be doing something they enjoy. I think I’m going to propose a non-smoking ban. From now on, everyone HAS to smoke in clubs. I guess I’d have to pick up smoking though… oh wait, no I wouldn’t. I just wouldn’t go to the damned clubs.
More importantly Awake, by the very fact that you don’t own the club, you have just as little right to be there as you claim the smokers there have to smoke. In fact, if the owner decides that people are allowed to smoke, that pretty much trumps any claim you have to make to the contrary.
But go ahead, run to the government to use its oppressive police powers to force your own selfish desires on everybody else who willingly accepts any possible risks associated with socializing around smokers.
P.S. I am a non-smoker and these laws are a load of fascist bullshit.
Smokers should be thanking the government for slowly tightening the noose, and helping them to kick their poisonous addiction by limiting the places in which they can engage in their self-destructive actions.
If smoking did not impose upon my own personal freedoms, then I couldn’t care less… but the fact is that I can’t sit outside on a sunny day at a Starbucks without some ahole smoker having his exhaust blow my way, watching me fan it away, and puff away as if nothing is wrong.
I have no respect for smokers, none at all.
Fascist bullshit… I guess rules for limiting car pollution, noise pollution, sexual harrasment, etc are all fascist bullshit also.
Awake? Not really. Still dreaming the moron’s dream of a a drug-free society /culture, I presume. In real live, never ever.
Next logical step? Food, of course. People can’t be left alone deciding what they eat and drink. They need a tough education and legislation (and the necessary bureaucratic infrastructure) to prevent them from ruining themselves and their surrounding silly society.
Awake, you obviously never have had to give up smoking. It ain’t as easy as saying I quit. I used to smoke and it took me four tries over several years to quit for good. It is a very hard addcition to quit and just being kept out of places doesn’t help. You can enjoy your coffee inside in the comfort of air conditioning while smokers have to smoke outside. You want it both ways, you want the inside and the outside free of smokers. You have to pick one. Deal with it.
I’m a non-smoker…..I also have the ability to avoid smokers if I so choose. That is the key word here…*choose*….I choose….not the goverment or some wannabe fascist bearucrat.
#16….it’s already started in Britain. The goverment is sending out *suggestions* to citizens and resturants about what foods should or shouldn’t be eaten. When they put Haggis on the list of no no’s for kids, the backlash was swift and virulent, I’ve never seen such fast backtracking……lol
Where do you people get the idea that smoking is a “right”. It is a privilege.
Being safe from harm is a RIGHT. Indulging in a pleasurable activity is a privilege.
Tobacco smoke is harmful and is considered carcinogenic. To work in a safe environment is a RIGHT, not a privilege. In fact, it is illegal to have someone work in an environment that is harmful to their health. Check out OSHA regulations. It is not enough to suggest they go work somewhere else, the job site must be healthy. It is only if the danger to human health can not reasonably be removed that protective measures may be taken.
Quitting smoking is easy. I know, I did it a thousand times before I stopped starting again. Regardless of how difficult it is to quit, that is no excuse to pollute the air I breathe. Or the air my wife and child breathe. And if you don’t like the restrictions placed upon the privilege of smoking, then quit. Or move somewhere where your smoke won’t bother those of us that object.
re 15, nothing like seeing someone’s true colors, in all their murky ignominy.
or the grasping at straw arguments to justify the unjustifiable.
1. There is no credible evidence that second hand smoke causes cancer.
2. The fact that you quit multiple times only to start smoking again proves that quitting for good isn’t easy.
3. Nobody is saying that you ought to have smoke in your face. The point is that smokers should be allowed to smoke somewhere. In a place with enough ventilation to carry the smoke away to be filtered out.
4. Driking alcohol is a priviledge too. Should we ban that as well? How about fatty burgers? Are Burger King and MacDonald’s next? Should we ban all bad habits? Where does this stop?
I am wholeheartedly sick of bad analogies, and people making up ‘facts’ to fit their argument.
Comparing smoke to flowers is total crap, and only serves to deduct credibility from you and your argument. Even if you have issues with pollen — and I do too — these two items are hardly able to be compared. Nor would destroying “allergy-producing plants” be wise. Plants provide that oh-so-necessary ability of converting carbon dioxide into oxygen. You can’t make an argument (good or bad) without it.
If you say that there is no ‘proof’ that second hand smoke causes cancer, then provide some links to facts. At least admit that SHS is harmful. Because I sure find a lot of evidence that it is harmful, and does cause cancer.
I get that this is an emotionally charged issue, and I am no exception. But come on — back up your arguments with facts and logical arguments. Otherwise what you write is no better than the buckets of spam I get every day.
So to get back on topic here, what about banning smoking in private clubs? My opinion is that if it is a smoking club, then as long at they venting their pollution in a way that isn’t affecting non-smokers, fine. If people work there, well, they knew it was a smoking club, and should sign a release. If it is a bridge club (for example), then the ban should apply, because playing bridge hardly implies smoking in any way.
I’m all for giving smokers a place to kill themselves slowly. As long as I don’t have to smell it, pay higher health insurance because of it, or pay higher taxes because of it.
Or be friends with yet another person that has died far too young because of it.
The point that second hand smoke is not harmful is only accepted fact by those in denial. Every major health organization I can think of believes SHS is harmful. Even the tobacco companies now admit it.
Secondhand Smoke
Public health officials have concluded that secondhand smoke from cigarettes causes disease, including lung cancer and heart disease, in non-smoking adults, as well as causes conditions in children such as asthma, respiratory infections, cough, wheeze, otitis media (middle ear infection) and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome.
http://www.philipmorrisusa.com/en/health_issues/default.asp?source=home_fca1
A private club doesn’t matter as far as the law should be concerned. For example, you couldn’t open a private club dedicated to using child prostitutes. Where there are employees, there are Health and Safety laws that apply.
Maybe if the club didn’t use any employees then they could quality.
Alex,
Yes, quitting tobacco is very difficult and I admire everyone that does quit. In my opinion, one need a very strong motivation to not only quit, but to not start again. Mine was the birth of our daughter.
When you decide to finally give ’em up, I wish you all the power possible.
“[The EPA] committed to a conclusion before research had begun”
Wow – I certainly don’t like the idea of consensus prevailing over science any more that I like hotheads prevailing over reason. Way back up your point with good data there Paul.
Which backs up what I am saying too — bad science is all around us, and scratching the surface of it often reveals many flaws.
As for hyperbole — “That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
for all those smokers out there ‘ITS OVER’