Listers:
Through my own fault, I didn't get my point across on the issue of the smoking ban .
I'm angry and disappointed at the mayor and city council, not for passing a smoking ban, but that they did it solely for venal and self-agrandizing reasons. I further assert that the shoddy workmanship, as evidenced in the written ordinance, is the proof.
Smoking in public and private in MN at least, appears to be going the way of the button hook and the paradigm shift is on the downhill slope. The state did several things to make that happen. They banned smoking in public buildings. As a wake up call, it couldn't be beat. Also, in a feat that I couldn't believe they would pull off, the state AG's office, under the leadership of Skip Humphrey, sued the tobacco companies and won. Excellent. We can all be grateful to Skip for that one and to Cereisi, et.al. Kewl.
And I do not dispute the city's right to create a smoking ban, since it could well be true that 80% of the population does not smoke. How much of that 80% is comprised of people under the age of 2, for example, or 5 or 9? (Boys used to sneak their first cigs at about 9 or 10.)
I would aver that the adults who smoke are a greater number than 20%.
My argument has to do with the history of tobacco in this country. It was one of the first export crops we ever produced and we were doing so while we were still English colonies. We firmly believed in that crop, it was helping to pay the bills. When King Geo the three and his ministers were trying to bludgeon financial support out of us, tobacco money help create an army to take on the silly sod.
I'm now 61. When I was a child, smoking was de rigeur if one wanted to emulate the hip and cool--at least as portrayed in the movies, on TV, in plays, in the funny papers, and in fiction. That is no longer the case in those media. There were even dancing cigarette packs on TV (Lucky Strikes) and "Call for Phillip Morris" from a commercial entered the slang for awhile. Edward R. Morrow, an icon to reporters, smoked on TV while doing his stories! Who could be more hip than Edward R. Morrow? Socially we are experiencing a tectonic paradigm shift away from the fabric of American life. Tobacco has been king for well over 300 years.
Those of my generation, 1940 to 1960 roughly, are probably the last ones to largely take smoking as a given, even though many may not be smokers themselves. I would say that my grandfather's generation was the last to take chewing tobacco as a given, but during my childhood, there were still a few old bars, taverns, and corner stores with spittoons. Today, spittoons are in antique shops, if anywhere. Paradigm shifts this large take more than one generation to complete.
Ergo, any politician worthy of the name knows that society was already kicking the habit. A politician who has his/her constituency in mind, understands who they are, or has even a grade school grasp of our history as a nation and how tobacco products are woven into both warp and weft of this society, will create a smoking ban which takes that into account. Our city council did not do that.
Therefore, their reason for the smoking ban, which arose, was barely debated, and became enacted in very short order The date was set, and boom, the ban as written descends from on high. Why then did the city's pertinent 14 do it?
I'm suggesting that their motives were entirely venal and self-agrandizing and I point to the March 31 implementation date as the opening of the silly season, per plan by the 14 pertinent persons at city hall. I further say that it was done as political lift off FOR the silly season and was done by each and every one of them solely to get re-elected. I point to the written document as proof and as a piece of shoddy workmanship.
A ban which did not give the finger to smokers (blaming them for being such sheep as to take up smoking in the first place and not quit on the date of the Surgeon General's first warning) might have gone thusly: Any bar/restaurant/coffee shop/beanery which is now non-smoking will remain so in perpetuity. Anyone applying for a license to open a similar venue will open as non-smoking. Any current venue will become non-smoking upon changing ownership. The smokers are a dying breed (in more ways than one, of course). As the old owners retire, sell out, die, the number of venues goes down and cannot rise again. Thus, we could have had a smoking ban and the pertinent city hall 14 would have shown themselves as worthy, thoughtful people. (I had my suspicions before, of course.)
WizardMarks, Central
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