[SheLion]

Now I know why Barb got the 'ell out of MASS! Too many Brown Shirts marching in Mass with Jack Boots!

[SheLion]

...that the public's health is more important than the bar or restaurant owner's wealth.

More and more Brown Shirts among us. They even have a "map" of the areas that still allow smoking that they want to tramp on.

[Just another Joe]

When you consider that 53,000 people a year in the United States die from second-hand smoke illnesses,

Again with unsupportable numbers.

[A Ruckus of Dogs]

While business leaders argue that such bans hurt business,

How can it be bad for business if you can't smoke in any bar? It's not your customers will be able to go to a smoking bar.

[Semper Paratus]

We just had a vote on this in Norwood on mandated non-smoking restaraunts and it lost,
but that won't stop these clymers.

[metesky]

My letter to the Boston Globe:

Re:Public smoking foes target the holdouts/MASS by Paul E. Kandarian, May 30, 2002

It is amazing to me that Mr. Kandarian, who is supposed to be a reporter, uncritically accepts the statistics handed to him by Lindy Muraca.

The numbers quoted, 53,000 deaths a year including 1,000 a year in Massachusetts are from The American Cancer Society which refuses to remove these false statistics from their web site.

The American Cancer Society got those figures from the 1993 EPA study that declared second hand smoke (SHS) to be a class A carcinogen.

The only problem is that in 1998 U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Osteen, of the Middle District of North Carolina, vacated the portions of the EPA study containing those figures as junk science.

As Judge Osteen said,"EPA publicly committed to a conclusion before research has begun; excluded industry by violating the [Radon] Act's procedural requirements; adjusted established procedure and scientific norms to validate the agencies public conclusion, and aggressively used the Act's authority to disseminate findings to establish a de facto regulatory scheme intended to restrict Plaintiff's products and to influence public opinion"

To continue to propagate these "facts" about SHS makes me, a forty year Globe reader, think that Mr.Kandarian and the Globe have ulterior motives. If you do not like smoke and smokers and wish to marginalize them, have the courage and intellectual honesty to say so, but please refrain from continuing to lie to your educated, aware readers.

[altair]

''Studies that I've seen haven't indicated that it hurts business,'' she said, referring in particular to one released in September 2000 by the Roswell Park Cancer Institute in Buffalo, N.Y., that showed little adverse affect on restaurant revenues

Um, right.

and that only 10 percent of smokers surveyed opposed smoking bans.

Um, right. Somebody has been hitting the crack pipe too much.

[BansheeBill]

In Braintree (a town just South of Boston) they banned smoking in restaurants a few months back and the owners howled, and for about 6 weeks there were stories in the local paper about their business falling off and stories of restaurant owners (especially the ones with bars in them) coming to selectmen's meeting pleading for relief and saying they might have to go out of business, and stories of bartenders and waitreses making a LOT less money.
I did notice that a popular bar/restaurant I passed nearly every day seemed to have a lot less cars than usual in it, but now, a few months later, there are no stories in the paper about restaurant owners coming to the selectman's meetings with tales of woe, and you can barely get into the parking lot of that local restaurant every night, and a friend who's wife works as a waitress says business is back to what it was (or maybe better as the economy seems to be improving) and tips are good as ever. They serve good food at a good price and although there was a dip for nearly 2 months, it appears that it is over, and all the predictions of doom and gloom are not going to come true.

[JPJones]

Now I know why Barb got the 'ell out of MASS! Too many Brown Shirts marching in Mass with Jack Boots!

Git out while the gittin's good!