Smoking Ban Upheld and Clarified
U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks issued a ruling today on the city’s one year old smoking ban. He clarified what steps a bar owner must take to be in compliance with the ordinance.
A bar owner must post “no smoking” signs and remove ashtrays and other smoking accouterments, Sparks ruled. If a patron continues to smoke, the owner can no longer be held liable for not taking additional steps.
Makes sense. Chip recently went into a bar where the establishment clearly wasn’t doing what was required by the law. He filed a complaint and got quite a few nasty comments on his post about it. It’s clearly still a contentious issue even after a year. Most, both smoker and non-smoker, seem to have moved on.
Smoking bans are the real threat…
Dear Editor. Oct. 12/06
The bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation from
sea to sea has nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed threat
of second-hand smoke.
The bans are symptoms of a far more grievous threat; a cancer that has been
spreading for decades. This cancer is the only real hazard involved — the
cancer of unlimited government power.
The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or a phantom
menace. The issue is: if it were harmful, what would be the proper reaction?
Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating people about
the potential danger and allowing them to make their own decisions, or
should they seize the power of government and force people to make the
“right” decision?
Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than
attempting to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the
tobacco bans are the unwanted intrusion.
Loudly billed as measures that only affect “public places,” they have
actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops, and
offices — places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose
customers are free to go elsewhere if they don’t like the smoke. Some local
bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is obviously
negligible, such as outdoor public parks.
The decision to smoke, or to avoid second-hand smoke, is a question to be
answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment
of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding
every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend
or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married
or divorced, and so on.
All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful
consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the
neighbours. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must
be free, because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbours, and only
his own judgment can guide him through it.
Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Cigarette
smokers are a numerical minority, practising a habit considered annoying and
unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the
power of government and used it to dictate their behaviour.
That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of
inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your
favourite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm
at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the systematic and unlimited
intrusion of government into our lives.
Thomas Laprade
Thunder Bay, Ont.
Ph. 807 3457258
Tim Trentham wrote of the Austin smoking ban, “It’s clearly still a contentious issue even after a year. Most, both smoker and non-smoker, seem to have moved on.”
It certainly IS still a “contentious issue” in Austin and in every other state and city where such bans have been enacted. A substantial segment of the population has been unjustly vilified and abused by laws and their misapplications. For the most part the target of those laws, bars, restaurants, and smokers, have grudgingly followed them because they felt they had no power and no choice in the matter.
Judge Sparks’ ruling truly follows the spirit upon which America was founded: when a government oversteps its bounds it is up to free citizens to stand up and say “No more!” and challenge that government to abide by our Consititution.
Michael J. McFadden
Author of “Dissecting Antismokers’ Brains”
http://pasan.TheTruthIsALie.com
Very well said, the both of you.
Smoking is Healthier than Fascism.
Thanks, carpetbaggers. Like I give a fuck what someone from Ontario and Pennsylvania thinks about something we enacted here.