Sweeter then ever.
Posted on 01/05/2006 6:57:14 AM PST by SheLion
Articles, editorials, op-eds and published letters in the pages of many of New Jersey's newspapers have been heavily lopsided in support of the effort to ban smoking in bars and restaurants. Each article or commentary seemingly has been designed to leave the reader with the perception that the supportive evidence presented is undeniable or that no contrary findings or opinion even exist.
Any claim that exposure to exhaled or sidestream smoke poses a threat to life is "indisputable" is false. There are studies and scientists who dispute it strongly. When New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg claimed his ban would save 1,000 workers' lives, the president of the American Council on Science and Health, who vehemently opposes smoking, wrote, "There is no evidence that any New Yorker — patron or employee — has ever died as a result of exposure to smoke in a bar or restaurant." Dr. Richard Doll, the scientist who first linked active smoking to lung cancer, said in a 2001 radio interview, "The effects of other people smoking in my presence is so small it doesn't worry me."
These statements, among many others, are based on the results of studies that found no long-term health risks, and even on studies that claim to find risks, because the science is so weak.
Since smoking bans are premised on protecting nonsmokers, this nonsense to ban smoking should stop right here. It is not a public health issue. However, the anti-smoking crusaders cloud the issue by also dragging in misapplied majority opinion. It's constitutionally unethical for the majority to tyrannize the minority.
But more importantly, polling the public to determine a private establishment owner's fate is indecent. No customer or employee — each free to be there or not — should be able to dictate the house's rules. And for the "my way or the highway" anti-smokers who don't get it, we mean smokers shouldn't either. Only one person's vote counts — the owner's.
The case that workers shouldn't have to leave an environment they don't like or hours that fit their personal needs is nothing more than emotional blackmail. Slavery ended a long time ago. No one is forced to do anything they don't like.
For the lawmakers who believe economics is the determining factor, New York City's sales tax revenue for bars and restaurants did not rise 8.7 percent, as claimed by agencies Bloomberg dispatched on the one-year anniversary (March 2004) of the city's ban. Not only were the figures distorted by including places like McDonald's and Starbucks as restaurants, but smoking was banned in 95 percent of restaurants since the 1995 smoking ban law. What pre- to post-ban restaurant tax revenue comparison was there to make? In all cases (notably bars), it's a no-brainer that sales tax revenue was artificially low immediately following 9/11. To compare the post-ban year to those figures is dishonest.
In April, the New York State Department of Taxation released a much more official review of sales tax revenue. When one compares the pre-ban year to the post-ban year, bars in New York City lost more than 3.5 percent. Statewide, as confirmed by a report in the New York Post May 2, sales tax revenue "dropped or remained relatively flat since the smoking ban went into effect July 2003."
Junk science, tyranny and cooked books is pitting neighbor against neighbor and has ruined or will ruin individual livelihoods. Unbelievable. Don't do it, New Jersey.
A note of disclosure: Our organization has no ties to the tobacco industry nor do we speak on the behalf of the hospitality industry.
Audrey Silk
FOUNDER
NYC CITIZENS LOBBYING
AGAINST SMOKER HARASSMENT
BROOKLYN
Sounds like living in those places is pretty good!!!!
I still think my comment about your company would work.......keep using the lounge and don't broadcast it.....
I do notice that many on the smokers' side get pretty touchy if you don't let them have their cigarettes anywhere they want. Must be a pretty tough addiction.
Listen, I am not going to put up with talk like that.
We do not want to smoke everywhere. For heaven's sake! We don't smoke in a Church, or grocery shopping, banks, post office, elevators, hospitals. We know where we can smoke and where we can not. I don't know what smokers you know that want to have one hanging out of their mouths 24/7 but it sure isn't the smokers "I" know!
Concur,I feel I go out of my way not to impose my smoking on other people. I never smoke in front of a doorway at a store. If people walk by I blow my smoke up. I also use ashtrays.
According to the ninnynanny anti-smoker gnatzies you are an anomaly.......when actually you represent the vast majority of smokers.
I found it!
The owners of restaurants, bars and other businesses ought to be able to decide, based on their customers' desires, whether to allow smoking.
Not only is the statewide ban on smoking in public places approved Thursday by the state Senate invasive, it's also a cop-out. The state Assembly ought to reject the measure.
Senators, who voted for the ban by a 29-7 margin, and acting Gov. Richard J. Codey say they want to protect workers at bars, restaurants, social clubs and other businesses from the health hazards posed by smoke wafting from customers' cigarettes.
However, following a compromise brokered by a few lawmakers, the gaming areas of Atlantic City's casinos, including bars and restaurants on the casino floor, would be exempt from the ban.
If it's so important to "protect" workers across the state from cancer-causing secondhand smoke, then it would seem workers in Atlantic City deserve that protection just as much as workers in every other community.
The truth is, this is a flawed and hypocritical idea the Senate is forcing on businesses that have less political clout to fight for their interests in Trenton than the powerful casino industry has.
Moreover, the measure is an invasion of people's rights. It's easy for the majority of New Jerseyans who don't smoke, including politicians, to say smoking ought to be banned in public for health reasons. However, smoking is still a legal activity in this state and every other state in the nation. Smokers represent a minority in New Jersey but, like every minority group in a democracy, they still have rights. They don't deserve to be treated as outcasts or criminals.
If lawmakers were truly concerned with smokers' and nonsmokers' health, they'd ban smoking altogether. But they aren't doing that because of the tax dollars brought in by tobacco, just as they're not going to ban smoking in casinos because of the money they generate.
The only truly fair way to tackle this issue is to let business owners be guided by market forces. If customers at a restaurant demand a smoking ban or stop coming or employees quit because smoking is allowed, the owner ought to prohibit smoking in the restaurant. Likewise, if the majority of patrons and workers want smoking at a local corner bar or social club, they should have the right to continue engaging in this legal activity.
As the number of nonsmokers in New Jersey continues to increase over time, the natural pressure on many businesses to ban smoking will increase, as well.
Smoking is a terribly unhealthy habit that, thankfully, far less New Jerseyans partake of than in decades past. The state ought to continue its efforts to help smokers trying to break their addiction and to discourage people, particularly children, from becoming addicted.
But this terribly flawed ban on smoking in public places ought to be rejected because it infringes too far on the rights of some New Jerseyans to engage in a legal activity and sells out on its mission to protect workers by exempting casinos.
Published: December 20. 2005 3:00AM
"Smoking is a terribly unhealthy habit"
No, smoking is a moderately unhealthy habit that might cause you alone problems if you smoke for a long, long time.
Receptive anal sex is a terribly unhealthy habit that could kill you the first time you do it.
I agree with your post--let the businesses decide. I grew up in a smoking household, too. Yecch! My dad used to smoke in the car. The windows were almost always rolled up. To this day, I get sick to my stomach just thinking about it.
The good news is he quit smoking before it was too late.
They huddle around the front door because they've been kicked out of the building.
And you said it even more elequently.
In related news, second hand smoke still disgusting and obnoxious.
Also, all our pets live long lives and they live in a house of smoker (s).
Oh yes. Them too.....
Sweeter then ever.
I do notice that many on the smokers' side get pretty touchy if you don't let them have their cigarettes anywhere they want.
Not in all states. We have heard horrible stories where old people in wheel chairs go outside their nursing home to smoke. In the dead of winter. And they end up "dead." So, not all states have compassion for the old folks in nursing homes.
Similarly, when I worked for a newspaper, my editor gave me an order to ask whether accident fatalities were wearing seat belts and if they weren't, to publish that fact.
Very soon after, I wrote in a traffic fatality that the deceased had been wearing a seat belt (to no avail).
Boy, did that order get changed to don't mention it if the dead wore seat belts.
I asked if that was fair and impartial and was basically told I'd be lucky to have a job if I didn't shut up and comply.
By the way, gasoline is back up to $2.50 a gallon here, as of today.
Good for you. I think everyone should start their children on tobacco as soon they switch to solid food, if not sooner. Come to think of it, I'm not sure why they don't give pregnant women should intravenous nicotine. You'd think it would make for healthier babies.
Back when I was a reporter I learned very quickly - if the cops don't mention seatbelts in the press release - the fatality was wearing one.
I saw gas over $2.20 in Maryland on Tuesday, $2.15 here this evening.
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