I assume every single Birther, anti-health care reform, anti-bailout conservative yelling in the streets is adamantly opposed to any part of this since it is government interference in our lives. Not to mention restraint of trade on the poor, downtrodden tobacco companies trying to make a few God-given right to earn American dollars!
Hey, you! Stop smoking in my atmosphere!
That’s the message from New York City, where the mayor and health commissioner have just released a policy agenda called “Take Care New York 1012.” Page 10 of the document says the city’s health department “will work with the city’s Department of Parks and Recreation and other entities to expand smoke-free spaces to include city parks and public beaches.” The city council speaker is very interested in the idea, but her help might not be necessary if the parks department can implement the ban as a regulation.
[…]
Then the crusade moved on to apartment buildings, extending the same theory: You can’t smoke in your apartment, because the smoke seeps under your door into hallways and other people’s apartments.Now this rationale has moved outdoors. Way outdoors. David Kessler, the former FDA commissioner who led the anti-smoking fight in the 1990s, says New York City is doing the right thing, because “the majority of the population today doesn’t want to be breathing in tobacco smoke, whether indoors or outdoors.”
[…]
But do I have the right to that standard of purity? If so, doesn’t that justify a ban on smoking absolutely anywhere?
#13: “New York City is incredibly conservative, actually.”
I’m not sure where you get your info, unless you’re saying it’s conservative compared to, say, Berkeley or DC. Out of 237 cities compared in this study, NYC was #21 most liberal.
This reminds me of the quote by Pauline Kael following Nixon’s win over McGovern: “I live in a rather special world. I only know one person who voted for Nixon.” It is frequently misquoted, but the point it, if you think NYC is “incredibly conservative”, your measure of liberal/conservative is WAY OFF the U.S. public’s.
If we’re going to ban smoking, can we also please ban churches? They have caused me much pain and suffering throughout my life.
You know, reading (most) of these comments reminds me of the one of the primary reasons I refuse to quit smoking. Simply put, it annoys a goodly enough portion of the human race to keep them the hell away from me!
On a more serious basis, if you are outside, and you are annoyed by someone else’s smoke, move. You aren’t confined to one spot. You are outside for Pete’s sake.
Just think, if smoking were REQUIRED, we could solve the Social Security shortfall pronto!
I stopped smoking and started ‘vaping’ instead months ago. Finally off of the cigarettes!
http://vapersforum.com/
http://e-cigarette-forum.com/forum/
I’m a liberal and a non-smoker but I don’t think it should be banned. Everyone has their vices.
Telling private citizens they can’t smoke on or in their own private property is the next logical step to a dictatorship.
Yes. Along with swearing, speaking, yelling, waving, running, riding bicycles, walking dogs, and a few other things. Also, to be outside you need to show your papers. If you don’t have them you’ll be detained.
38 LibertyLover,
The article is discussing the smoking in public places; i.e. public parks. I said it earlier in the blog post that it’s a “good thing” since parks are family/kid affairs and cig butts are a pretty nasty kind of litter.
It’s not enforceable though. I think it’s just a mechanism for people to complain about something and then “something” gets done: a fine is issued.
I abhor cigarette smoke. But banning in public is just wrong. What we should be doing is fining those a-holes that cant trash the cigarette butt properly. I’m talking about a $500 fine each time they’re sorry a$$ does this. You can’t imagine how annoying to have to go the the park, beach, dine outside to fine it’s littered with these.
#10
Bann of bear has happened here in San Diego. I don’t drink at all but even this I don’t agree with. Again, it’s really only the few a-holes that get drunk and cause problems to the public. Why everyone has to pay is beyond me.
If the city is short of cops to take care of the problems how the hell does it make it a beer issue? Violence is not going to stop when beer is banned. Someone is always going to pee where they want and testosterone will always have males fighting each other.
Make them buy carbon credits from Al Gore.
@JimR – Sure as long as you do it in the same minor quantities as you get from walking by a random smoker, and apply the same logic to all other shit that is unhelathy in large quantities but we have to deal with. Cars and dog farts come to mind.
@johnrudy – well said, thank you
No, smoking should not be @#$%@ banned out $@%# doors.
Fascists!
I’m so totally sick of smokers, the attitude, the “its my right”. I also buried both parents — both smokers, both died of lung cancer. Go figure! The air in our house was always blue, everything stunk, and I was always sick (asthma, upper respiratory infections, blah blah blah).
I hate the whole notion of smoking aside from being ugly, filthy and the stench, the worst thing is that smokers who are hell-bent on smoking — like it’s some necessity of life. They are addicts, plain and simple, and to hell with the rest of us. If heroin users can’t shoot up anywhere they feel like — in plain view, and boozers can’t walk around with an open bottle (and puke all over) then why should smokers get their fix in public places?
I think there should be huge fines for those morons who decide to dump their ashtrays in parking lots, drop their butts where-ever they are, and long prison sentences for those who throw burning butts out the window of vehicles (for all of them, not just the lucky few who start fires). They obviously do not care about the health of others (especially bicyclists and motorcyclists and those driving convertible cars and pedestrians). The people who walk around streets smoking ….could care less if the smoke wafts into businesses, or other people’s faces. It’s all about the fix. Damn addicts…..
I think they should ban ALL smoking but only in California and New York because I think it is funny when people in those states are miserable.
Obama would veto a smoking ban — you know, because the president is a smoker.
Don’t ban them.
Raise the tax on them enough to make them a dollar a cigarette.
Then make a law that allows only 200 cigarettes per month to be brought into the city from being purchased elsewhere. Anyone caught over 200 will be fined 500 for the first offense and 1000 for each offense thereafter.
Inability to pay fine will result in either garnishment of wages, lien on property or community service in what else? Cleaning up butts of course.
Then appoint a city Tobacco Czar just to piss off the conservatives who hate the word Czar.
Cursor_
I’d like to see all drugs legalized along with prostitution.
I’d love to see these activities allowed with the prohibition that they can’t be done outside.
Freedom–like anything else falls on a continuum.
Most of you dopes focus on the wrong end of the dog.
In New York, the cigarette smokes you.
I really don’t see the black market emerging as much as folks think it will. Who is going to risk arrest or jail for a lousy cigarette?
One Krispy Kreme doughnut will not make you obese, but a daily habit of ten will. How many smokers just have one cigarette?
Cigarette smoke smells, which is not even apparent to smokers, and it stains. McDonald’s and Krispy Kreme do not leave a yellow film all over everything.
Take a walk in your local hospital’s ICU and see all of the smokers dying of COPD. When their lungs have lost all of their elasticity and they can no longer breathe, their last breaths will be provided by a machine. Then there is cancer…
I only smoke after sex.
I’ve looked. I really do.
Next Bloomberg is going to ban beans. As we all know, beans cause flatulence, which produces methane, and methane is a dangerous greenhouse gas.
You should all remember that before Bloomberg was an Independent, he was a Republican!
Ban it everywhere for everybody (the entire planet)
What the fuck is wrong with people that think the world is their ash tray? Every time I see someone flick a cigarette but while driving, I feel compelled to go take a dump in their back seat.
They should make a law that lets all the cigarette smokers go inside the bar to smoke. I live three doors down from the bar and the smoke drifts into my open window. (It’s summer and I have no air conditioning)
I do not mind a smoky bar. I do not want a smoky living room.
What the hell is wrong with all these folks who think they can dictate life for everybody else? If I don’t drive then I should be able to tell you not to pollute my neighborhood right? I’m an organic kind of guy and I don’t want you folks polluting my world with bug spray. And for God’s sake don’t you dare fart in my vicinity.
I smoked for twenty some odd years and it hasn’t killed me. I don’t anymore but guess what? I get discriminated against for smokeless tobacco anyway – and I don’t spit. Should we outlaw chewing gum? Where does it stop with the anti smoking Nazis? Tobacco is not the biggest problem for polite people who can exercise moderation, the anti smoking crowd is. Bet I can keep up with you in a bicycle race! What do you say, ten miler? My point is that while the health risk are obvious to anybody who does not take care of their body, tobacco in and of itself is no worse than so many other things in our environment. It’s all in how we handle it. How many alcoholics we got in this crowd? Substance abusers? Fat people? Anti depressant users? We are jacking up our bodies and our environment in a thousand ways and you folks want to get all neurotic about tobacco? Give it a break.
greyangel, you sound just like my Dad, before he got his diagnosis of lung cancer….
The problem is….smokers are ass*oles, and you are proving my point. The attitude is the problem. When I was a kid people used to smoke everywhere..on airplanes, in restaurants (lit up during meals and stubbed out their butts in the uneaten food), in bars, in people’s homes (even if the people asked nicely for the NOT TO), and anywhere else. The attitude “I smoke, screw you” was everywhere. Smell my ash, smell my ass….could have been the chant.
Tobacco stinks. It smells bad. It makes people into rude, demanding idiots — from what I can tell.
Smoking has no redeeming qualities. Not quaint. Not cool. Not even remotely interesting. You are not discriminated against. That is b.s. Think of it as you habit is not being encouraged. Gee, but guess what…drunks get shit for drinking (and arrested for being drunk in public). IV drug users get crap for shooting up (and arrested for doing so in public). Neither thing should be encouraged in public….and, finally, neither is smoking.
It’s about time.
I don’t care that you smoke. I do care that you do it around me. I am sick of holding my breath to walk down the street.
It’s not all neurotic… I’ve just had my fill..and honestly, farts smell better. For that matter most anything smells less terrible than the shit coming out of that cigarette you smoke. Maybe you should try smoking cat shit….
#58, Ed,
Pissing on their front seat is good too. If you must take a dump then you need paper to wipe your … oh, the front headrest?
Never mind.
As polluted as N.Y. City is, and people are worried about tobacco smoke? This is a joke right?