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brian bates wrote:
heard on the bbc when folks were talking about ireland's public smoking ban - "haveing a smoking section in a bar or resturant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool." Brian Bates MacGroveland.
Irelands ban is the the best I've seen yet, it includes providing free nicoteen replacement theropy to anyone who wants it. Something that any US poiticans would not do. You see even though the tobaco companies are "evil" making profit off of our suffering. The truth of the matter is that ever since the surgen generals warning has gone on packs of smokes, if not before the US government has made more money per pack sold in the continetal US than the "evil" tobaco companies. and even though government finacal analysts have warned against using gambling revenues to balance budgets because of there volitility, no such claims have been made about tobaco, unless you change existing tobaco laws / regulations.
Please see above. plus note that most states or at least MN, WI have already confiscated the lump sum settlements from tobaco companies, that gives them immunity from furthar prosicution. None of this money is used to subsidize nicoteen replacment theropy, or make it more readly available ie like where ever cigarettes are sold.
Andy Driscoll wrote:
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.
So far as I know no one has said brething the crap from GSE is safer than smoking (n) number of cigarettes a day? although I have read reports equating the air quality of New York to 1 - 2 packs a day. and that was before all the smokers moved outside.
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.
Or install more urban ethanol plants?
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
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Please have mercy on the poor by providing better access, and some kind of susidy to people who wish to quit. cigarette taxes are one of the more regressive taxes next to FICA. But don't be surprized if the politicians don't want to give up their (really our tax money), to help in this cause.
Arno A. Karner
West 7 th. st. < 300 ft. NNW of GSE
http://tnss.com/noise_stink
aka Behind the Muffs, smoker, ex-smoker, smoker,.....(wants to be ex-smoker) but wants to be an ex-ethanol breather more
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