Posted on 06/23/2002 9:26:10 PM PDT by chance33_98
Smoking Ban Hurting Tempe Restaurants
Tempe, June 19 (AP) -- It may be a breath of fresh air to walk into restaurants here and not smell smoke, but restaurant and bar owners say they're smothering.
They are asking the City Council to do something to ease the financial pain arising from the new, restrictive anti-smoking ordinance.
A number of owners say revenue is down by as much as 20 percent since the voter-approved ordinance took effect May 30. They plan to outline their concerns during a council meeting Thursday.
"You can either kill yourself with gloom and doom, or you can take the tack that clean air is far better than dirty air," said Lee Fairbanks, who spearheaded the campaign to restrict smoking. "It's healthy, it's better than sitting in a cloud of cancerous smoke."
Since Tempe voters approved the most stringent smoking ban in the area, police have responded to 38 complaints of smokers in bars and restaurants but issued no citations.
Correct up to a point. The "representative" may not pass a (consittutional) law that subjugates any of the rights of the individual. Government is supposed to be, in actuality, nothing more than the collective power of the people and of the states used to guarantee the life, liberty and pursuit of happiness of the people. It should not be able to dictate matters of personal behavior nor should it be able to intrude into/onto private property. We understood this concept in this Country until roughly 1913 when the federal government began sticking its collective nose into the everyday lives of US Citizens. The federal government that our founders envisioned was to have practically no interference with the daily lives of people and the individual states were not given much more power than the feds. As we have become a nation of whiners, convinced that the "government" can save us from unwanted circumstance, we have forgotten the principles and beliefs that our forebearers fought and died for. Sadly, to our own detriment.
The body of law has been established. That is reality.
Yeah, you are right. You are wasting your time.
Actually I not only think this - I know it for fact.
It is other citizens who are driving their political leaders to give them a rest from all of the smoke in various establishments
Actually you are wrong. There are numerous organizations, many of which get much in the way of public funds (read taypayer money) that are fomenting all of this dissent. These people make nice salaries doing this. The article you posted previously quotes one of them.
I have email from one of these organizations encouraging their members to call, write, email or fax their legislators, the governor and the newspapers to express their opposition to any measures that will weaken Delaware's statewide smoking ban. In the email they are specifically told to NOT disclose their memberbership in an organization that is based through the Delaware Department of Health and Social Sevices...........
Another email from this organization includes an email to them by a Delaware State Senator. I've got no problem with that in general. What bothers me is that this Senator is promoting this group and it's founder as some grass roots group of people who don't like smoking. That is so far from the truth that it is more than just a simple white lie. In a 3 year period (1990-92) the founder of this organization received more than $20 million in state grants in California. Every penny of it was for his anti-smoker "research" and every penny of it was funded by a cigarette tax increase on the smokers of California.
But let me take this even further. The other heavily funded group the good Delaware state Senator is in contact with is in New York. He's in direct contact with the founder and head of that group. And as you seem to be such a rah-rah supporter of what these organizations are doing all over the country I'm sure you're truly going to like this - he is an out of the closet homosexual and he and his partner are the daddies to 2 teenage girls.
I actually videotapped their appearance on CBS Sunday morning a year or so ago. What a fabulous roll model he is for his daughters, a former stock broker who (allegedly)gave up his career to be an (highly paid) anti-smoker advocate. The CBS profile had nothing to do with smoking - it was solely centered on "alternative" families.
Apparently it is better "for the children" to be an anti-smoker than it is to be a NORMAL family.
If you haven't gotten the idea yet - anti-smokers, in my opinion, are no better than anti-gunners. They all make me equally ill.
NOT according to OSHA. You need to check your facts before you make such statements.
A representative may pass laws on anything not permitted in the Constitution.
The Second Amendment is one expressly permitted activity. But, since the representatives have not stated that the states will follow the Second Amendment, the only amendment by the way, the states continue to pass laws on guns. I add this second paragraph only as further clarification of what I am talking about.
What f'ed up world do you live in where the only people against smoking bans are those who smoke? Dufus.
If the power is granted to the State via its Constitution.
I'm asking if you'd be satisfied with a split. Some bars where there's no smoke, some where there's only smoke, and others where both smokers and nonsmokers could go. That doesn't seem statist to me.
The day may come when those local thugs who use government guns to force their will upon others, will cower in their homes as those who wish to be free begin to take back thier lives and their country.
Cmon, give him the full treatment like you did me or else I'm gonna feel like you guys hate me more.
Whatever.
What about another establishment that permitted smoking anywhere? For instance, what if there were three bars right next to each other: one non-smoking, one "mixed", the other all-smoking. Is that okay?
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.