Outdoors, the smoke dissipates. Not rapidly, sometimes, and smoke has a way of expanding to fill the air available to it, no matter the volume.
Indoors, it hangs - confined and stale - to be inhaled over and over again by smokers and nonsmokers alike. Utterly unacceptable. And have you smelled a barroom the next morning? Smoking has become a true social divider. Smokers really have a world of their own as do those who avoid them. People - even families - now cluster according to their smoking behavior - or lack of it. Those of us who have reaped the inevitable benefits of 30+ years of smoking - asthma and emphysema - as I have - have found ourselves making more and more decision about social events based on the presence or absence of the hated gases. It's a sad thing to demur on a good music date because it's being held in a bar that allows smoking and even the nonsmoking areas fill with the wretched stuff. Comes now the newest studies suggesting that 1) incidents of heart attacks in Helena, Montana, dropped significantly during a 6-month citywide ban on smoking in public places, but especially bars and restaurants; 2) the Kentucky Supreme Court upheld the City of Lexington's smoking ban as protecting the health and safety of the community; 3) even the briefest exposure to very small amounts of second-hand smoke can magnify the risks and incidence of heart attacks geometrically; and, 4) finally, since the Minnesota Legislature slashed the funding of anti-smoking efforts toward children and adolescents, smoking among those groups went from 6% back up to 21%. Now we're in the business of creating another generation or two of self-destructive nicotine addicts all to make political points and kowtow to the tobacco companies' thousands of dollars of campaign and lobbying monies. Smoking is a worse public health hazard than polio was, smallpox was, illegal drug use is. Not only should it be banned from public spaces, it should be illegal to use it or else confined only to one's personal use at home - and nowhere else. If you're gonna kill yourself, do it out of the harm of others - anywhere. There is no excuse for continuing this collective addiction that so badly harms all of us. It's immoral to foist on a public the effects of such harmful substances. You might as well dust the city with poisonous overflights. And ask any restaurateur who has taken the advice of those who know - and I know several who have - banned smoking altogether in their places and found their revenues upped by 50% to 100% overall. It's a winning strategy. And who suggested that if this were true, restaurants would have banned the stuff long ago? Yah-but...the primary reason bar and restaurant owners retain smoking has nothing to do with sales. In most cases, it's because they smoke themselves and want to continue to do so in their own places. And even some of them would welcome a ban. They just don't want to be the ones taking the heat from smoking customers who threaten never to darken their doors again. Well, that's a lie, because they almost always come back, even after boycotting the place for a few weeks. Meanwhile, sales have jumped and profits are rolling in. Smokers don't need to be able to smoke over a meal. 98% of them can't smoke at work and now even less so at home around their children. They can live without it for a couple of hours in a restaurant, even a bar. Then we can spare wait staff from having to labor in this destructive atmosphere, saving millions overall in eventual workers' comp claims. Where is there the slightest justification for imposing your self-destruction on those around you? Andy Driscoll Saint Paul -- on 4/24/04 11:15 AM, mike skoglund wrote: > Proponents of a smoking ban should visit cities with smoking regulations to > see how they effect other quality-of-life issues. I live in New York, where > the smoking ban has moved the smokers out of the neighborhood bars and into > the neighborhood streets. Imagine the sights and sounds of "bar close" for > an additional 5 or 6 hours a day! > > If Minneapolis bans smoking in bars and restaurants, but doesn't regulate > smoking on sidewalks, don't be surprised by the crowded, noisy, polluted > sidewalks until 2am. The city won't be banning smoking -- it will only be > moving the smokers outdoors. > > Mike Skoglund // Financial District NY // Bancroft Minneapolis REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. For state and national discussions see: http://e-democracy.org/discuss.html For external forums, see: http://e-democracy.org/mninteract ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
