If the City of Minneapolis and Hennepin County politicians were not hypocrites and political panderers of the highest order they would be honest enough to ban smoking in all public spaces including the outdoors if they are truly against tobacco and its evil. Instead they pick on bar owners and patrons. If you can have "Dry" counties and towns then you can surely also pass a law to make a tobacco free county or town. But please let's stop with the "Urban Myth" about tobacco subsidizing bars to allow smoking. The truth is that smoke free bars have been a dismal failure because those who only want to go to smoke free bars are so small a number that they will not support a smoke free bar if they are allowed to compete with those that allow tobacco. Otherwise you would have them operating now.
And please let's stop the holier than thou rhetoric about "only caring for the health of the workers". Loud music WOULD be banned if that was the truth. There would not be a cab driver, or a convenience store clerk, a police officer, or a firefighter in this City if that were the basis of the ban. All work in far more hazardous to the health professions. The politicians just need to be honest and pass the law all at one time. Of course we do not have a politician with the guts to offer such a ordinance or law all at once, Instead they whittle rights away a little at a time.
Jim Graham, Ventura Village, Phillips, Sixth Ward, Minneapolis
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