Still catching up on that e-mail. I got this one from Mayor Bob Sunday, regarding my column of that date. I guess Tony Blair showed it to him or something:
To: <Bwarthen@thestate.com>
Subject: No Smoking
Date: Sunday, July 16, 2006 11:46 AMBrad, I am in the UK on an economic development mission but read your editorial (or column). I believe that Columbia City Council could address the issue of a no smoking ordinance as early as August. I believe the Surgeon Generals report will be critical. While I have not talked with all of City Council I am very pleased with the level of support at this point. I addition to the health issue, I think it is also an economic development issue. People are going to want to invest and live in cities that have no smoking (I believe).
Thanks
Sent Wirelessly while away from the City of Columbia with my International Blackberry.
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Don’t we have enough threads on smoking yet? Couldn’t you just have posted this email in the other thread?
Mayor Bob can outlaw smoking and then suck in all that wood chip smoke.
Maybe The State can get the new anti-smoking ordnance worded so it can be used to shut down Maurice’s Barbeque, merging two of their crusades into one.
This is going too far. We’re becoming a police state. As a democratic voter, I can tell you that the last thing on my mind is a smoking ban. Why does the so-called Democratic Party “leadership” always insist on killing its own prospects by alienating people that should be voting democratic. I’ve got news for you Mayor Bob, people that have the propensity to vote for you don’t care about limiting smoking-they do care about their jobs being outsourced, however. Manufacturing is being decimated in SC and the US, immigrants are pouring across the border and lowering wages, personal debt is going through the roof, the savings rate is practically zero, health care is unaffordable or unavailable, pensions are disappearing, and your solution is a smoking ban. Not good enough. I’m so sick of the university/Chamber of Commerce cabal that I could regurgitate. Why don’t you deal with the real problems rather than pander to a small group of zealots. What are you going to do about the disappearing middle class and a supposed “ownership society” that doesn’t work? Will the smoking ban fix that-or do you just have totally misplaced priorities?
While Bob Coble was on a recruiting junket in England, the Modine factory in Blythewood was shut down, and 170 jobs moved to Mexico.
When I don’t like something, I don’t: buy it, touch it, eat it or support it. BUT I don’t need government local, state, or otherwise telling me what I should do. I’m not impressed when it becomes a major story in the media when, like previously posted, there are so many other things that DO affect our lives. What a waste of type. JMHO
VietVet, that’s great that you don’t touch it, eat it or support it.
But … and I don’t know how many times I have to say this before it gets through … what do you do WHEN YOU DON’T HAVE ANY CHOICE?
What if you LIKE going out to eat or to hear live music at a bar, but if you go there, you are FORCED to smoke?
That is the current situation. Why can you not see that this is light years away from your dream scenario of being an empowered consumer? Right now, we have no choice.
What a crock, that you have no choice of where to eat, or listen to music!
If the majority of other patrons want to smoke, the bluenoses don’t care. They want to FORCE the majority to give up the pleasure of smoking a cigarette or cigar. The intolerant person’s idea of being an “empowered consumer” is his being able to dictate the dining and entertainment choices to all other consumers.
If there were a public smoking ban, you would be free to smoke in or around your own home or in your car, and to go wherever you like so long as you refrain from smoking there.
Without a ban, if I want to avoid being exposed to cigarette smoke, I have to stay away from any place that permits smoking, even if only a minority of the patrons choose to smoke there.
I was actually willing to let the status quo stand on this issue as a sort of compromise. However, after reading the rabid, obnoxious, illogical nonsense coming from the other side I’m inclined to support ADDITIONAL restrictions on smoking. For those of us who just want to breathe clean air it’s imperative that we fight any and all attempts by the radical, pro-pollution idiots that want to turn the clock back. I’ve decided that the best way to do that is to push for additional restrictions just to let them know we’re not going to stand for their disgusting invasion of our airspace.
For starters let’s ban all restaraunt smoking. Then once this passes we can push for a ban on all smoking on public sidewalks. If the pro-smoking, anti-freedom (to breathe) crowd wants a fight I say let’s give it to them.
Let’s see, we have the seatbelt police. Next we can have the smoker police. But why isnt anyone being charged with littering? Oh, that’s right, no one litters in SC. Yes, let’s put some more useless laws on the books.
How about the smoker army. To paraphrase Winston Churchill:
We will fight them in the Restaraunts.
We will fight them in the Hotels.
We will fight them on the Sidewalk.
Our lungs will never surrender!!
Yes, Wally, if you want to avoid stockyard smells, you don’t go to cattle auctions or the state fair. If you do go to the rodeo, you expect smell horses.
If someone’s public smoking bothers you, ask them to stop. Don’t be a baby who has to point to a sign put up by the police.
If your business is important enough, some businesses will cater to you non-smokers. The problem is, that isn’t good enough. You want to outlaw smoking in hundreds of places you’ll never go, just because you want to force other people to behave like yourself. That’s un-American.
Bud, how can you ban smoking in a cigar bar?
Dave, cigar bars should be outlawed. Better yet, we must declare war against the evil weed. The very survival of the western world depends on eradicating the dangerous and highly addictive drug nicotene. The smoking terrorists will stop at nothing to inflict their vile way of life on those of us who simply want to breathe. These people are jealous of our way of life (they secretly wish they could breathe clean air) and will do anything to ensure that no corner of America is free of tobacco smoke. Anyone who does not wish to join me in this holy war is nothing but an anti-American member of the cut and run crowd. So all real Americans join me in this battle. The future of our children is at stake.
In order for satire to work, the author has to actually not agree with the silly things he says.
Bud, you would have been one of the leaders of the Prohibition movement. That was another do-gooder crusade like this “outlaw all smoking everywhere crusade”. How about this: Smokers of the world unite, you only have your butts to lose!
Dave, please answer an earlier question that I have posted before. Why does government have the right to interfere with your rights to drive as fast as you want to? Why do you want government to interfere with people’s rights there, but not with their right to release 50 different kinds of carcinogens into the air I breathe? Why can’t you at least be consistent?
Under civil tort law, you never had a right to drive as fast as you want to, without suffering the consequences of any harm you caused.
The government owns many of the roads. Just like a private road owner, they have the right to establish rules of operation, including minimum and maximum speeds which will keep traffic moving smoothly and safely, for those who lack the personal judgement to determine those speeds for themselves.
None of that has anything to do with the moralistic crusades against smoking on the streets, outdoors, inside private dining establishments, etc.
Strange. I thought one of government’s jobs was to protect its citizens. Among them protect citizens from being murdered by other citizens. Seems like that ought to apply to both wild driving and carcinogens, regardless of who owns the property on which it takes place.
Herb, no one has ever proved scientifically that anyone has suffered from second hand smoke. Annoying it is, yes, but calling it deadly, that sounds like Algore science. I could afford to lose a few pounds myself but I can say I don’t like to eat near extremely obese people. I kind of stay away from all you can eat buffets for that reason. How many other people does that annoy? Do we get to a point where we pass laws where fatsos who don’t chew but instead inhale their food must sit in a different section. Where does the do-gooderism stop? People who sit in a restaurant talking loudly on cellphones is also very annoying to me. Especially those who have to talk so much they wear a headset. My choice is to ask the waiter to move me to a different table, not petition the government for another law. But Lee is right on regarding government owned facilities versus private facilities.
Well Dave, we’ve seen this kind of argumentation on this blog ad nauseam. But the simple fact is that second-hand smoke kills. You’re blowing a smoke-screen to try and obscure the fact, because it doesn’t fit within your ideology. Now if Rush came out trumpeting the facts, you’d probably adopt them whole heartedly.
But I don’t propose to write any more, on this or any other subject. It is time to keep quiet again, if I can only bring myself to do it.
But Dave, you still haven’t prove to me why government should at all interfere with your right to drive as fast as you want. I don’t see why government should interfere with your individual rights at all, given your ideology. In fact, I don’t see any reason for governmnet to exist under your ideology.
Herb, since you are unable to discuss smoking with anything more than unfounded assertions that you “just know that second-hand smoke kills people..”, please don’t tangent into other issues as a diversion. Just admit your position is based on emotion, hate, envy and bigotry – as is the case with most liberals on every issue.
It is not the government’s job to protect citizens from themselves, or from imaginary dangers, or the mere possibility that some action might hurt someone in some unprovable way.
That is the kind of Nanny State that liberals want, but America was not constructed that way. If you cannot prove in court to a jury a direct causation of action to injury, it is a bogus claim.
Lee, how come I keep reading in just about every magazine about the dangers of second-hand smoke? Even in Reader’s Digest, the absolute epitomy of scholarship? What does it take to “prove” something to you? And what does common sense mean to you? I mean, if cigarette smoke kills the people who smoke it, why would it do nothing to the other people who breathe it in? True, it has been filtered through the smoker’s lungs, but that doesn’t account for the same amount that is drifting off of the cigarette itself.
What does it take to prove something to you, if you don’t want to believe it in the first place? And what does this mean:
This is the way you pretty much dismiss anyone who disagrees with you. This type of approach is pretty close to the Biblical definition of a fool, which is simply to ridicule any position it doesn’t agree with.
I don’t envy cigarette smokers, by the way. Not at all. I don’t think I hate them, either.
Besides, Lee, I didn’t ask you. I asked Dave. Dave is a reasonable fellow. You have often proved that you are not. Now why did I bother with that last post, anyway?
You liberals read junk magazines, you get junk information, repeated assertions as dogma.
Try to find a long-term study which directly links background tobacco smoke to any diseases. You won’t find any. None have ever been produced in court.
Try to find long-term studies with even a weak statistical link between background smoke and health issues. What you will find are some 20-year studies, in workplaces with heavy smoking, sampled by instrument, and no worse health among the nonsmokers than among non-smokers in an enviromnent that is smoke-free.
I wonder how many people know that the UK has a law called ASBO for Anti-social Behavior Order? Anyway, the do gooders in the UK have used it for getting a court order (with prison time for violation) on people with unruly hair, nasty body piercings, cursing, even the use of sarcasm – where an 87 year old man was given a court order to stop saying sarcastic things to his neighbors). This is where we are heading with a law for everything for everyone. Check this out:Visit Aniti-Social Behavior Disorder!
But then, Europeans are much more civil than Americans, right?
Second-hand Smoke Study Finks No Links to Health Problems
By Mike Wendling
CNSNews.com London Bureau Chief
May 16, 2003
London (CNSNews.com) – A study about to be published in this week’s British Medical Journal indicates that second-hand smoke doesn’t increase the risk of heart disease or lung cancer, but the publication and the study’s authors have come under attack by anti-smoking groups.
Two American researchers analyzed data from an American Cancer Society survey that followed more than 118,000 Californians from 1960 until 1998.
James E. Enstrom, of the University of California at Los Angeles and Geoffrey C. Kabat of the State University of New York at Stony Brook concluded that “the results do not support a causal relation between environmental tobacco smoke (second-hand smoke) and tobacco related mortality, although they do not rule out a small effect.”
“The association between exposure to environmental tobacco smoke and coronary heart disease and lung cancer may be considerably weaker than generally believed,” the researchers wrote.