Posted on 11/01/2006 8:50:13 AM PST by lowbridge
DENVER -- If you are old enough to remember candy cigarettes, they may be what actors have to use in front of Colorado audiences.
Even pretending to be a smoker is illegal in the state, if real cigarettes are used as props on stage.
Denver District Judge Michael A. Martinez said there is no exemption allowed for Colorado's theater companies to use real cigarettes on stage. The state's indoor smoking ban gets top billing.
Theaters seeking the exception said they didn't even want to smoke tobacco, they've been smoking herbal alternatives on stage for years. But the judge says there's no proof that smoking anything is covered by freedom of artistic expression, and a rule is a rule.
Directors have said that fake cigarettes, like those containing talcum powder, look fake and distract the audience.
Theater advocates said the ruling sets up a future constitutional struggle in court over free speech rights.
Curious Theatre, Denver's Paragon Theatre and Boulder's Theatre13 challenged the law.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedenverchannel.com ...
What about drawing a picture of someone smoking?
Smoke an American flag and the ALCU will go to bat for you...
LOL! Gotta love it!
Lost in all this is how brain-dead the law is. Note the strict construction the judge applies. Absurdity piled upon absurdity.
Glad I don't live there and I don't smoke.
Stupid.
Or thinking of smoking?
Even if you don't fake that you're not inhaling?
My question is, what has Hizzoner Martinez been smoking?
Or watching a movie of people smoking?
Oh! The Horror! The Horror!
Or posting a photo of someone smoking?
(Actor Sean Penn smoking a cigarette)
Whoops. Did I just violate Colorado law? :-)
We have become a nation ruled by judges. They reach far into our lives. Enough, already.
They were good. But even as a child, I knew it was pretend and it never lead me to smoke.
What has happened to the Colorado I once knew? Have they been taken over by loons from Kalifornia?..........
I read a story some years ago (probably here at FR) about an incident that happened in LA. Robert De Niro was in some ultra-swanky restaurant with friends. Mr. De Niro was smoking some kind of herbal cigarette (I think it may have been stuffed with cloves). Because it smelled decidedly not tobacco-like, the party's waiter became nervous, and told his boss. Because the smoker involved was such an important person, the message had to go all the way up the restaurant's owner, who had to personally come down and make sure Mr. De Niro was not doing anything... uh... illegal, so to speak. Which he did with the utmost deference and discretion. The great actor chuckled and assured him that it was all completely above-board.
I don't smoke, the cigarette does............
Aw, Marilyn, say it isn't so!
I wonder how they define "smoking"?.............
I guess NYC's attitude toward smoking is noticeably more lenient than is Colorado's.
Well there is the actual case where a first grader drew the typical picture of cowboys with (hand) guns drawn on the "bad guys" - and was suspended for his actions - I kid you not.
Maybe Martinez is just saying that the law says X and the judiciary has no authority to interpret the law as saying Y instead of X just because some people would like it to say Y. If you don't like the law, change the law not the judge.
The title seems more crazy than the ban actually is. However, people should be able to smoke and use cigarettes as props, sort of similar to how people should be able to eat trans-fats: they shouldn't consume them, but it is not the government's role to stop them.
Its funny, actually. It seems like people tend to smoke more in "liberal" places. I lived in San Francisco for a year and almost everybody there smoked. When I went to a liberal university almost everybody there smoked. Yet, funny enough, when I go to church I never see a single smoker. That's not to say people who go to church don't smoke, but I'm guessing its a lot less common.
Those bubble gum cigars were pretty cool.
An unlit cigarette violates the smoking ban? (Surely no one would light the talcum powder "cigarette" mentioned in the article.)
The smoking ban bans smoking, including the case where nothing and no one is actually smoking?
Actually it isn't. (NYC has asmoking ban in bars and restaurants) The thing is that the guy smoking the doobie knows, like most other criminals, that the cops wont show up after he is long gone. Just try to find a cop in Central Park.
Just consider it my own little botched joke. ;-)
Is it still legal to pretend we're free?
This is an example of a fascist goverment out of control as every government ruled by "liberals" becomes.
The same government will put old people to death, unborn babies to death, women in a coma to death, protect the lives of murderers and terrorists, put people in jail for smoking and for talking about "gay marriage", raid your home and kill you for having the wrong opinion.
It all depends upon the wording of the ban. Because of the wording of the smoker-ban in Delaware what the actors in Denver have been using on stage would be perfectly legal, because the ban specifically states tobacco. Cigarettes that do not contain tobacco, but rather other legal products, are perfectly legal to smoke in places smoking tobacco (such as bars) is illegal.
This sort of thing is becoming a commonplace everywhere, such that if a given state's legislature ever decided to ban interfering, anal-retentive, whinging, control-freak busybodies who can't manage to get through a day of life without telling someone, somewhere what to do and/or how to do it, the same state's population would no doubt vanish overnight.
Well, finally they've tipped their hand. I've said all along it's not about second hand smoke, it's about telling smokers what to do. It's about control, by control freaks that have so little control of their own lives, they get their jollies by telling someone, anyone what to do.
I'm reminded of once being in a checkout line at Wal-Mart. While the checker was checking my groceries, I took a cigarette out and held it in one hand while holding a lighter in the other as I chatted with the checker. I had no intention of lightig it, but a woman behind me was becoming more and more agitated. She finally shrieked, "You can't smoke that in here!" when I told her I no such plan, she became even more shrill. "But you have it in your hand," she protested. Since that day, I take every opportunity to wave an unlit cigarette around. It drives the Nazis nuts. Oh, I forgot. They're already nuts.
"What about drawing a picture of someone smoking?"
Are you kidding? That's next. Then there'll be the the crime of "thinking about smoking."
From the article,
"Directors have said that fake cigarettes, like those containing talcum powder, look fake and distract the audience."
Candy cigarettes ? I bought some this year off a campground store shelf.
ping
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.