he Bloomberg administration will ask the City Council to amend New York City's antismoking law to include all restaurants and bars, making it one of the toughest in the nation. Posted on 08/09/2002 1:47:28 AM PDT by sarcasm
he Bloomberg administration will ask the City Council to amend New York City's antismoking law to include all restaurants and bars, making it one of the toughest in the nation.
The current law, passed in 1995, forbids smoking in all restaurants with more than 35 seats, and excludes stand-alone bars and the bar areas of all restaurants. The proposed amendment would add roughly 13,000 establishments that would be forced to ban smoking entirely.
A state bill banning smoking in all restaurants passed the Assembly this year and had enough support to pass in the Senate. But under pressure from Gov. George E. Pataki, who insisted on exempting small restaurants, and a heavy lobbying campaign by restaurant groups and the tobacco and liquor industries, the Senate's Republican leaders never put the bill to a vote.
However, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg — who, along with his health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, is persistently anti-tobacco — views bars and restaurants as workplaces before social establishments, and has said that employees within them should have the same option of a smoke-free environment as those who work in offices.
"The mayor will push this," one administration official said, "for all the same reasons he pushed the cigarette tax. He makes changes to things that he thinks are important."
Mr. Bloomberg gained approval from Albany this year to raise the taxes on cigarettes, making the cost of a pack about $7.50 in the city. The administration is expected to announce its plans to amend the antismoking law on Monday. Even cigar bars, if they serve alcohol, are likely to be included in the legislation.
In the last month, the mayor has quietly lined up support in the Council, where several members are likely to sponsor a bill at his request forcing all smoking New Yorkers to do their puffing outdoors. (Under the 1995 law, smoking was outlawed in public places like theaters and offices.)
Among those consulted was Councilman James S. Oddo from Staten Island, who came up with his own more modest bill this spring to expand the smoking laws to small restaurants. Hearings were never held on the bill.
"The health commissioner and the mayor make a very compelling argument for legislation that goes well beyond my bill," he said yesterday. "I am seriously considering sponsoring it."
Edward Skyler, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg, would not comment last night.
Timothy Filler, the associate director of Americans for Nonsmokers' Rights, said the amendment "would be hugely significant."
"New York is a bellwether and a city that many others look toward as a leader," he added. "If New York City were to do something that included restaurants and bars, it would be a great step forward in public health."
The city is bound to meet some resistance from both some restaurants and bars and those that represent them, although the New York State Restaurant Association recently reversed its longstanding opposition to the proposed state law after a survey showed that 76 percent of its 7,000 members favored the law.
"Our position has been that we have some of the strictest rules in the country, and we have learned to live with them, and we think they should be left alone," said E. Charles Hunt, the executive vice president of the restaurant association.
However, he added: "If a total ban is proposed in all public places, I think people are going to say nobody has an advantage over anyone else and would seriously consider whether or not that might work. The whole thing seems to be boiling down to an employee safety issue at this point."
Lawmakers in Nassau and Suffolk Counties are considering similar measures, officials there said.
If such a law were passed, New York City would join two states — California and Delaware — and scores of municipalities that ban smoking in just about every workplace, including bars and restaurants.
Three other states — Maine, Utah and Vermont — have statewide bans on smoking in all restaurants. Municipalities have been more aggressive in seeking tough and broad antismoking laws, largely because local legislatures are less vulnerable to the powerful tobacco industry lobby.
New York State law requires that a restaurant have a nonsmoking area that encompasses at least 70 percent of its seats, but the smoking area can be in the same room.
There are 72 municipalities in America that ban smoking in any restaurant or bar, according to Mr. Filler, and hundreds offer some other variation on a law against public smoking, allowing people to light up in stand-alone bars, or permitting smoking in restaurant bars that have separate ventilation systems.
In California, where the Legislature passed a law in 1994 that banned smoking in all workplaces, including bars and restaurants, many tavern and restaurant owners feared dire economic consequences. Some studies, including one by the state's sales tax collection agency in 1998, actually showed an increase in sales after the law was enacted.
"I don't believe a New Yorker would choose a steakhouse in Weehawken over Ruth's Chris in New York City because of a smoking regulation," Mr. Oddo said yesterday.
Mr. Bloomberg, who has a school of public health named after him, is aggressively antismoking. When he lobbied for his cigarette tax, he insisted that he did not care whether the city made or lost money, but rather that the tax would keep children from smoking. He has been known to chide reporters for their puffing, and has takes slaps at the tobacco industry in speeches.
He has found a kindred spirit in Dr. Frieden, the health commissioner, who said when he was appointed that his main priority would be to combat smoking. Dr. Frieden has even produced a radio advertisement deploring secondhand smoke.
You can choose not to go to that restaurant again. You can choose to go to a different restaurant that bans smoking, if there are enough people like you to create a demand. And you can thereby allow smokers to continue to have the choice to smoke.
Maybe that's the point of these ordinances: to raise money from the fines. Money, I should point out, that the bar customers ultimately pay in increased prices.
Well, I see a difference. Do you see a "thin line" between smoking cigarettes and smoking crack? Or smoking pot with PCP? Smoking pot with formaldehyde? Laced with heroin? Laced with cocaine?
If it's illegal, I don't care whether it's smoked, snorted, or injected. There is no thin line.
You KNOW they will put their own spin on it! They will spin it to make it look like it's a GOOD THING, when most of us know it is NOT a good thing!
That's rediculous! McDonalds is a super place to hold a kids birthday party! No smoking, and I hear they serve up a good apple pie. heh!
Oh geeesh........Ask BLOOMBERG about HIS pot smoking experience! LOL
Appropriate you should call the anti-smoking fanatics Nazis. It was also Adolf Hitler's theory that he didn't have to nationalize business as long as he controlled it.
If we knew there would be no smoking in a place, we would go there often.We have a gigantic one. There are days that I come home after work and I can't even smell cigarette on my clothes.Actually, most decent restaurants and bars have huge smoker eaters installed today that pulls out the smoke AND any lingering stale smoke smell. So that's not really an issue either.
Here's the really ridiculous thing about the "employee safety" approach to attempting to ban smoking in bars. It ignores the primary principle on which occupational chemical exposure laws are based: the Permissable Exposure Limit (PEL).
All chemicals which OSHA, NIOSH, or any other government agency considers hazardous have a PEL. Most have both a "peak" PEL and an 8 hour average PEL. The former is the maximum concentration that any employee can be exposed to at any given time. The latter is the maximum average concentration they may be exposed to over an eight hour period.
Environmental Tobacco Smoke (ETS) has no PEL. The zealots claim that any exposure to it is hazardous. This is a ridiculous claim on its face, since people intentionally ingest much greater concentrations of the same substance. Taken further, it breaks down as well. The substances that ETS consists of do have PELs. They are all found in levels well below the limits established by federal and state regulations.
Applying this most basic principle of industrial hygiene makes it clear that the crusade to ban smoking in bars isn't about protecting workers. That's just an excuse used by the We Must Protect You From Yourselves crowd.
-Eric
Your preach'n to the choir! LOL!
It happens all the time around here (So. Illinois). It'll probably be the same way tonight.
And how about the EPA saying right after 911 that there was NO DANGER TO THE PEOPLE?
Where was Bloomberg THEN??!! How quickly he forgets!
I get accused of that a LOT! LOL!
Just a passionate issue with me.
Until that day comes, however, it is a legal product. I support the decision of a restaurant to allow the smoking of a legal product.
I don't see the connection to pot or any other illegal drug. I am not arguing (in this thread) for or against pot. Pot is currently illegal.
I am not using the same arguments as the anti-smoking Nazis. They say smoking causes cancer. I've never said that about pot. They say second-hand smoke causes cancer. First, that's not been proven, and second, I've never said that about pot. Third, they say it smells bad. I've never said that about pot. And on and on.
Now, I've been up front with you. Return the favor. What are these "same arguments" that I use that you're referring to?
No one ever said you were smart.
1. Open your own restaurant, and do as you please.
2.Don't go to restaurants where there is smoking. ( Kind of like if you don't like skin cancer, don't go out in the sun.)
3. Cook at home.
4. Picnic at parks, etc.
5. Drive-through windows
Sorry I had to post you these simple choises, but you did ask.
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