It's about control!
Posted on 02/14/2005 5:26:50 AM PST by SheLion
HALLOCK, Minn. - On Dec. 18, I attended a panel discussion sponsored by the Grand Forks Tobacco Free Coalition at the Alerus Center. After listening to the panel members and researching both sides of the issues, and having lived in California when the smoking ban was instituted there, I strongly urge the Grand Forks City Council and other agencies to take no action on the issue at this time, except to research the facts on both sides.
Why? First, the health issue is seriously questionable. As the American Council on Science and Health has put it, "the role of environmental tobacco smoke in the development of chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease is uncertain and controversial."
The term that comes to my mind is "comparative risk." That is, if you were to compare the risk of secondhand smoke to other risks found in homes and workplaces, you'd find little real difference, especially if those other risks were subject to the same scrutiny that secondhand smoke has endured.
Second, the economic issue is distorted, and our area cannot afford the risk that the same thing that happened in California will happen here. As someone who lived through California's non-smoking program, let me lend some insight as to its real effect.
The smoking ban in California was a failure. For one thing, it was accomplished through lies, exaggeration and bureaucratic gamesmanship. The lies included the health risks (for example, the statement that 50,000 people die each year from exposure to secondhand smoke) and false representations of health studies (check the World Health Organization and other groups on this).
The distortions included what the estimated economic impact would be on all workplaces. Minimal, the activists said. The reality proved different. The loss in productivity (from smokers having to leave the workplace to smoke) and jobs (from scores of restaurants and bars closing and other businesses moving) was substantial.
If you are not traveling, then bars and restaurants are a luxury. They're an activity on which customers choose to spend their discretionary dollars.
As the Bismarck Tribune pointed out in its editorial against smoking bans, smoking and food go together. So when restaurants force smokers out into the area's cold weather, those smokers do not go out to eat. They stay home and keep an equal number of non-smokers with them.
The result is a 40 percent to 60 percent loss in sales for bars and restaurants with bars. In California, this meant the closing of almost all non-chain restaurants and bars six months to three years after a smoking ban. And that was in a state where the weather does not deter smoking outside; you can expect a greater impact here.
In addition, many smokers are older or retired people, and pushing them outside in weather that lately has been dangerously cold probably would create higher health costs than would the status quo.
The well-financed special interests against the legal activity of smoking will coerce legislators into making a major mistake. Please let your representatives know that they should have all the facts before acting.
Troy is former economic development director of the Kittson County (Minn.) Office of Economic Development.
Thanks for the compliment. WW is a true conservative hero of mine. I like to just post the link to find out of the gnatzies on these threads are willing to take the time and make the effort to educate themselves. In this case, posting the article might be necessary.
You're about an arrogant a**!
What makes you in all your "youthful glow", think that I can't run up stairs two at a time?
However, I also value property rights and my own liberty. Property owners should have the right to run their business as they see fit. If you know that smoking is allowed and you enter anyway, where have your rights been violated? I am an adult citizen. I should have the right to choose to enter a smoking establishment or go elsewhere. It's all about informed consent.
The seat belt laws and the non-smoking laws are prime examples of that "incremental approach" - the old story about the frog in the pot.
The seat belt laws haven't stopped their creep.
Now on the highways in Texas are billboards asking people to report others they see on the highway who are not buckled up.
Very soon we will see billboards asking motorists to report people in other cars who are smoking.
First it will be "for the children", then it will be "to protect the environment".
Hogwash!
It's about control!
Who made you the judge of my actions?
What gave you the right to define anything that I do as a filty addiction?
It's none of your damn business!
Just once, I want to hear from an anti-smoking nazi like yourself that you understand the meaning of personal property rights.
And you'll be choking on hate, terminally stupid and shallow.
Looks like we win.
And thanks for the link to the WW column.
I just love him.
Here's the truth.
You're unable to get outside your own head and realize that a free society is messy, that there's a give and take required.
I'm always amazed at what possible good you smoking Gnatzies think your are doing.
You're unable to fight your way out of your narcissistic, childish cocoon to see the damage you're doing to the foundation of our country, private property rights.
You snivel and insult, and think you're making "arguments."
Your "moral" finger-pointing is abhorrent.
It sounds like you may fit into several of the categories that the author Michael McFadden refers to in his book, Dissecting Antismokers Brains, http://www.antibrains.com/. He describes nine categories for antismokers. In your case, I'll settle for his introductory description for just two of them.
THE NEUROTICS: "A person who has markedly and significantly more than the average psychological difficulty in dealing contentedly and productively with one or more commonly encountered aspects of life."
THE CONTROLLERS: "We've all known people who feel a need to exert more than the normal level of control over the people near them and the world around them...."
You certainly seem to be concerned with making the world a better place. That sounds a bit patronizing to me. "We smokers" want to retain our right to choice and are protecting our civil liberties...something you wouldn't understand. We were considerate of people who disliked smoke until it became apparent that those with Fascist attitudes would never be satisfied until everyone was forced to behave in a manner that suited their sense of right.
In regard to your statement that "It is a sin and I cannot endorse nor condone such a thing.", I can't resist adding one more category to my above profile for your attitude. THE MORALISTS: "When the Puritan righteous among us get their hands on the levers of the state, the property and liberty of all of us are likely soon to be at risk" - Robert H. Nelson (Reason 06/96)
Save us all from your kind of truths! Our liberty is at stake!
______________________________
Garnet Dawn - The Smoker's Club, Inc. - Midwest Regional Director
The United Pro Choice Smokers Rights Newsletter - http://www.smokersclubinc.com
Illinois Smokers Group - http://groups.yahoo.com/group/illinoissmokers/
mailto:garnetdawn@comcast.net - Respect Freedom of Choice!
DEAD ON!!
As an adult WHEN have you EVER been FORCED to tolerate someone else smoking? The answer is NEVER.
I am sorry you have respiratory ailments that are impacted by cigarette smoke, but I'm sorry to say that is not my responsibility, nor the government's, to safeguard you from it - it is your responsibility. Same with you disliking the smell.
You seeking government solutions to your personal problems is not exactly a sign of conservative thought. Sorry if you find the truth offensive.
Cigarette Smoke Has its Benefits
What is our current definition of clean air? Is it the air we breathe on a cool night, while standing in the desert or on a beach where we can see thousands of stars twinkling in a crystal clear sky. Is it spending a day in the mountains near a sparkling stream?
According to anti-smokers, it is breathing the recycled germs and viruses from every other person in the same sealed and enclosed environments of our office buildings and shopping malls where smoking is no longer allowed. We are supposed to believe with no reservations that fresh air is being supplied by ventilation systems.
What kind of air are we really breathing? What are the long term effects of our supposedly healthy no-smoking indoor environments? What is recycled and manufactured air doing to us? I really would like to know, especially after my most recent shopping trip. We need cigarettes back in our closed environments to provide us with visible proof that we are being supplied with enough fresh air.
Cigarette smoke used to be the "whistle blower" for indoor areas with substandard ventilation systems. Before smoking was banned from shopping malls and offices buildings, if a haze of smoke remained in the air, it was a warning sign of poor air circulation and stale air.
Now, smokers are no longer allowed to light up indoors, so I wonder how we captives of controlled air quality environments can possibly know what kind of poisons we are being forced to breath. I smoke, and if allowed to spend my time in my car, home or outdoors, I breathe freely.
I have always had strong allergic reactions to the dyes in clothing, carpeting, paint, fabric sections and various plastic products. Prior to smoking bans and sealed buildings, stores and shopping malls did not cause me any discomfort. Now, my eyes become red until I leave the stores--be it Marshall Fields or Wal-Mart. On the day following a shopping trip, my nose, sinuses and inner ear passages swell shut. I have learned to cope with these inconveniences through the use of eye drops, baby-oil-on-a-Q-tip (for my ears) and home made nasal rinses. I would like to see what the smoke from cigarettes would be able to tell us about the “cleaner” air we are supposed to be breathing today.
I used to enjoy flying. I now dread it, not only because I can't smoke in the airport and on the plane, but because I know I will feel sick the day following my flight. I prepare myself with aspirin and cold tablets to negate the effects, but I didn't find this necessary either before airline smoking bans were passed. How many passengers could survive a flight without the little "air nozzle" above their seat, giving them the impression that they are receiving fresh air during their trip? Passenger planes have become notorious for spreading colds and viruses among travelers. Airlines would be forced to return to adequate ventilation levels if smoking were again to become legal on flights, because passengers would be able see if airborne impurities were being eliminated along with the cigarette smoke.
Our world is so concerned and self-absorbed with health warnings that no one can watch, read or listen to any media source without paid commercials constantly reminding us to visit our doctors for endless preventative test procedures, and suggesting we can improve our lives by trying any of the hundreds of pharmaceutical products being advertised for any number of imaginary ailments. Big pharmaceutical firms, with the assistance of the advertising media are breeding a population of hypochondriacs! We need to encourage survival of the individual, squash this norm of socially acceptable prescription druggies and medicating ourselves into oblivion! Is Prozac really preferable to a cigarette?
Something is twisted in our age of technological advancement. I really wish we could go back to the choice of opening our windows, lighting a cigarette and using fans (a no-no for many buildings with codes forbidding plug-in electrical devices) on a nice day, rather than alternately steam-roasting then freezing everyone unlucky enough to be trapped in our inescapable state-of-the-art poisonous buildings.
You obviously have not spent much time on any smoking threads because that is the position of the VAST majority of us around here.
For all the years I have been here I've told other FReepers, who are non-smokers, that if they are in my neck of the woods I would be more than happy to meet them for coffee or a beer or a sandwich and do it in a non-smoking venue...........of course those are also the non-smoking FReepers that don't go around calling smokers addicts, smelly, obnoxious, and a whole host of other insulting names.
You started on this thread with an insulting attitude, and really haven't backed off of it. If you think folks are going to forget that without some give from you, you are sadly mistaken.
I completely agree. It’s just one more example of our loss of liberty. Seat belt laws are an invasion of privacy and right to choice. They impact no one’s safety except the wearer. I personally feel safer not being locked into a seatbelt. It should be a matter of personal preference. Passengers on buses, trains and even school buses are not required to wear seat belts. They march to a different set of drums.
I remember thinking, "That would never happen here," and regarding the very idea as something that could only happen in "foreign" territory.
The "foreigners" have gained a voice far above their numbers (or worth) here, unfortunately.
The creep.
Wimps........3 or 4 at a time is the way I like to take them, stairs that is. But of course I do have long legs and 2 at a time is just a normal stride for me..........
There are billboards in Maryland paid for by the County Health Departments (read-smokers) about second hand smoke killing children....they drive me crazy. It doesn't go un-noticed by me that there is an abortion clinic less than a mile from one of thoses signs. Tell me, who is killing children?
The nannies are out of control.
Response to posts #94 and #95:
Paved Paradise wrote: "It (smoking) is a sin and I cannot endorse nor condone such a thing"
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.