Smoking ban debate heats up in Eden Prairie

One of Eden Prairie's largest private employers has threatened to relocate many of its 600 jobs if the city passes a novel antismoking ordinance, joining a growing number of businesses rebelling against the proposal.

Douglas Corp., a manufacturer of car logo emblems and other product-identification items, joins metallic balloon manufacturer Anagram International and other businesses and business groups lining up against a proposal, the first in the state that would ban smoking in industrial businesses as well as bars and restaurants. Anagram said a few weeks ago it might be forced to relocate 350 people if the smoking ban passes.

Good for them!!!!

"It's a human rights issue and a business issue," said Douglas Corp. president Doug Skanse,

Supreme Court Justice Goldberg writing for Chief Justice Warren, and Justice Brennan, in Griswold v Connectticut, 1965.

"While the Ninth Amendment - and indeed the entire Bill of Rights - originally concerned restrictions upon federal power, the subsequently enacted Fourteenth Amendment prohibits the States as well from abridging fundamental personal liberties. And, the Ninth Amendment, in indicating that not all such liberties are specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments, is surely relevant in showing the existence of other fundamental personal rights, now protected from state, as well as federal, infringement. In sum, the Ninth Amendment simply lends strong support to the view that the "liberty" protected by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments from infringement by the Federal Government or the States is not restricted to rights specifically mentioned in the first eight amendments."

Smoking a tobacco product on private property is a personal liberty, that only the private property owner can prohibit.

No government entity has the power or jurisdiction otherwise.

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