Bill Would Limit Smoking by Apartment Dwellers - & allows law suits if your smoke drifts

kxtv ^

[chance33_98]

Bill Would Limit Smoking by Apartment Dwellers

California smokers may soon have one less place to light up. A new law would make it difficult for apartment dwellers to smoke at home.

Assembly Bill 210 would make it illegal to smoke in any in any common area of a multifamily dwelling, including outdoors. It would also forbid use of tobacco products in any apartment not specifically designated a smoking unit.

If it becomes law, AB 210 would allow residents, landlords or homeowner's associations to sue tenants who allow second-hand smoke to drift beyond their apartments.

The bill's author says that the legislation is necessary because drifting smoke can be both a nuisance and a health hazard. "You can sue someone to force them to turn off their stereo at 2 a.m., but you can't sue someone to force them not to smoke, even though it comes into your apartment," said Assemblyman Joe Nation, D-San Rafael. "There's something wrong with that."

Critics say it's not the government's job to tell people where they can smoke, and call the measure a violation of their rights.

The bill comes up for committee hearings later this spring. Assembly Bill 210 can be read in its entirety by clicking on the link below.

Full Text of Assembly Bill 210

[Just another Joe]

However, it is not limited to that, I didn't misstate his/her position.

I didn't miss that post. I just think HE might have misstated his position.

[swarthyguy]

Jihadis and the Control Freaks have a lot in common; they both seek to use the state to control, restrict and prohibit behavior they do not condone and in their unmitigating arrogance and self-righteousness, drawing upon a percieved divine dispensation makes their insistence on a code of conduct and behavior defined by them truly a nauseating spectacle.

[VRWC_minion]

What say you?

Get a majority to pass a state law to ban meat in restaurants.

[VRWC_minion]

Yes, but now we have got him/her to advance the opinion that property rights exist only at the pleasure of the state

Actually without the state there is no such thing as property rights, except guns.

[Fraulein]

"Hitler embarked on a program of tripling taxes on cigarettes, draconian restrictions on indoor smoking, and a goofy, largely anti-semitic, propaganda campaign against smoking...Nazi Germany passed a law forbidding Jews from smoking in 1938. Jews were denied coupons nessesary to purchase cigarettes, which was later extended to pregnant women and to all women under 25. Images of second-hand smoke invariably contained images of dollar signs and Stars of David. Nazi anti-smoking posters contained carictatures of Hasidic Jews trying to lure an "Aryan" youth to take up smoking. Smoking was depicted in posters as the vice of 'capitalists, Jews,Africans,degenerate intellectuals,and loose women.'"

"Smoking was banned in many workplaces, government offices, hospitals and rest homes. The NSDAP(National sozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei) announced a ban on smoking in its offices in 1939, at which time SS chief Heinrich Himmler announced a smoking ban for all uniformed police and SS officers while on duty. The Journal of the American Medical Association that year reported Herman Goering's decree barring soldiers from smoking on the streets, on marches and on brief off-duty periods. Sixty of Germany's largest cities banned smoking on streetcars in 1941. Smoking was also banned in air raid shelters, though some shelters reserved seperate rooms for smokers. During the war years tobacco rationing coupons were denied to all pregnant women (and to all women below the age of 25) while restaurants and cafes were barred from selling cigarettes to female customers. From July 1943 it was illegial for anyone under the age of 18 to smoke in public. Smoking was banned on all German city trains and buses in 1944, the initiative coming from Hitler himself, who worried about exposure of young female conductors to tobacco smoke. Nazi policies were heralded as marking 'the beginning of the end of tobacco use in Germany.' They embarked upon a propaganda campaign which attempted to stir up anti-smoking hysteria..."

[Fraulein]

Get a majority to pass a state law to ban meat in restaurants.

Sort of like a sheep and three wolves deciding what is for dinner?

[VRWC_minion]

The state creates the rights to begin with. Therefore the state can change the rights via majority rule. Any other theories about private property are anarchistic.

[Protagoras]

One might be able to make the case for an owner occupided multi, but that's about it. Rental Properties are just like Commercial properties... they aren't "private homes"...

Incorrect. The apartment is a home under law. The property is private. The owner and the leasee can set the terms of occupation in a free society. Smoking or no smoking is the property owners right.

You talk about building laws, the article cites laws concerning behavior by people. It tells the owner what he can allow, in lawful behavior.

You seem to think the state has no right to pass such a law, I say the state government can pass it...

And that is the fundamental difference. The rest is irrelevant.

Governments do not have rights. People have rights. Governments have powers. Only some of them are legitimate. These are not.

Conservatives should oppose these laws on principle. A word that has become denigrated on this site by so called conservatives.

"Keep in mind, if you take baby steps in any direction, sooner or later you will reach your goal". ...Walter E Williams

Real conservatives recognise these attacks on private property for what they are, an attempt to create government control over private property.

[VRWC_minion]

That's the system, simplified. We have created some checks and balances via state constitutions and division of power but if you track back to the seeds you will find that a majority can change the laws and by extenstion your property rights.

[Protagoras]

The state creates the rights to begin with.

BZZZT, put on your dunce cap. Rights are not created nor granted by governments. See the Declaration of Independence for one such affirmation of that truth.

Therefore the state can change the rights via majority rule.

BZZZT, go sit behing the piano, you flunk.

Any other theories about private property are anarchistic.

Those noted anarchists the founders disagree with your childish understanding of rights.

[VRWC_minion]

What does the declaration say about property rights ?

[Protagoras]

Sort of like a sheep and three wolves deciding what is for dinner?

Ochlocracy, rule by the mob.

The founders totally rejected any idea of a true democracy. The poster is ignorant of fundamentals. It explains much.

Other conservatives should be setting upon this poster for embarassing them by posing as one of them. I don't think they will, I hope I'm wrong.

[Protagoras]

Read it. It talks about where rights originate. Read it some time. Then take a crack at the constitution.

[Fraulein]

The state creates the rights to begin with.

What do you misunderstand about the word "inalienable?" The State does NOT create rights, though you are right to think that if the state does "create" rights, then it can also take them away. However, my fundamental rights are not negotiable. Nor are they subject to the arbitrary and fleeting whims of the majority.

[Protagoras]

Actually without the state there is no such thing as property rights, except guns.

Huh? Wow, amazing misconceptions.

[Publius6961]

Comes directly from a report by the Texas Department of Transportation... you can find some more interesting info on cigratte butts and their impact at www.cigarettelitter.org

LOL.
Were you aware that the Flat Earth Society also has a Web Site?

That "figure" is pulled out of the same place that the "600,000 cigarette related deaths" comes from: somebody's nether anatomical parts.

I find it easy to resist responding to doofuses normally, but this triumphant smug quoting of "unimpeachable" sources made up specially to perpetuate some state grant I couldn't resist responding to.

Having dialogs with bricks is my idea of boredom-cure of last resort only.
Enjoy your neurotic hissy fit.

[VRWC_minion]

That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

The current peoples of various states have instituted governments that in turn have created property rights and have created laws to protect those rights.

Until the People decide to abolish this "new Government" it is has the power from the "Consent of the Governed". Those consenting to the "new Government" have consented to the laws of the "new Government" and by extension the bans on smoking.

Therefore, so long as a majority want to an your smoking they have that right. If you disagree, overturn the current government and create a new one.

[New Girl]

And where, pray tell, do you meet these inconsiderate smokers? Can't be in a restaurant, or a shopping mall, or a theater, or a sports arena, or an office building... is it outdoors somewhere? Like a park?

Do they just walk right up to you and just start blowing it in your face? I wonder why anyone would do that? Wierd.

---

Here's an example, Critter. I was sitting on the bleachers at a high school football game and a woman sat down two seats from me and lit up. As she blew the smoke the wind was blowing it right into my face. My friend on my right very politely asked her if she could please put out her cigarrette because I had asthma. Her response was that I should move -- even though I was sitting there first. So, basically the entire area of the stands had to endure this idiot smoking. It is a filthy habit. People who smoke do not realize how offensive their smoking actually is. Here at work, you can get on an elevator after the smokers have gotten off and the smoke still lingers in the air. Our stairwells in the garage of our parking deck are not used anymore because they stink so much from the employee smokers who huddle in the cold to get their fix. Oh yeah, and there are thousands of cig butts littering the place...

[Protagoras]

WE hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness -- That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men,

[Fraulein]

It always amazes me how some of these people are able to spout out their stupid beliefs with so much self-assurance, and with so much confidence.

I'm not sure I'll ever be able to understand it.