The Smoking Ban Debate Rages On…
I am happy to see that this debate is finally raging here on the Metblog. And I definitely hear what you are saying, Chris - there are a number of places, especially in a city like Nashville, that risk losing some of their character if smoking inside them is no longer allowed. But if every restaurant, bar, and club in Nashville lost the ability to allow its patrons to smoke inside on the same day, the “character lessening” effects of a smoking ban would undoubtedly be diminished. It would be an equal playing field. Tootsie’s wouldn’t be any less authentic than any of the other honky tonks becuase you wouldn’t be able to smoke in any of them.
More importantly, though, we must consider the public health ramifications of secondhand smoke. Maybe Blake (commenter from the previous post) is right that secondhand smoke doesn’t cause cancer. I don’t know, I’m not a scientist or a doctor. But I know that when I spend a long evening out in restaurants and bars, it hurts my eyes, nose and throat. I cough more while I’m there and I cough more when I wake up. I also know that when I lived in a house with smokers, I coughed more, got sick more, and had worse allergies. I also know that smoking itself does cause cancer - that has been proven. It certainly makes sense, then, that secondhand smoke would cause cancer too, though probably to a lesser extent.
I don’t argue against anyone’s right to smoke. But social paradigms change over time, and the right to enjoy a cigarette indoors over the objections of the non-smoking majority is a right that is disappearing, with good reason. This is a natural step in our society and our government is not out of line in passing legislation that codifies a new social norm.
Here’s hoping that the smoking ban in restaurants is such a success that next year’s Assembly passes one for bars as well.
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Smoking indoors (presumably you mean in businesses) is not a right. It is an opportunity offered by the business proprietor to his customers. If you don’t like places where that opportunity is offered because smoke causes you pain and coughing, don’t go. This is less about smoker’s “rights” (more accurately, desires) and more about business owners’ rights.
This is a natural step in our society and our government is not out of line in passing legislation that codifies a new social norm.
That’s one of the most scary things I’ve read in a long time…yet I know that most people think this way in our society today.
If it’s a “social norm” according to a certain group of people (majority or minority), then they think it should be legislated. People that think this way are only doing themselves and their children a disservice by fostering a growing government that continues to reach into every aspect of our lives.
As the old saying goes…”Corruptissima re publica plurimæ leges.” (The more corrupt the state is then the more numerous the laws.)
The correlation is that by creating more and more laws that influence our lives, the more corrupt the government becomes. While it tends to be the natural course of all societies, we can slow it down by not thinking that “there ‘ought to be a law” for everything we disagree with.
Well said, Blake! The ass—- who want their clothes to stink of sweat instead of tobacco will receive their due when the nanny state arrives.
If it was a social norm, it wouldn’t require codifying in law.
It would be easier to agree with all of these very noble-sounding arguments if smoke wasn’t so good at permeating an indoor environment, and if indoor environments that allow smoking weren’t so prevalent. It is and they are, and you can argue with the reliability of the studies that document the health risks, but how much scientific proof would there have to be? If it could be conclusively shown that even the smallest amount of exposure to secondhand smoke could kill you, would it still be wrong to ban smoking in public places?
They tried this with alcohol it was called “prohibition”. The government decided that tax revenue was more important than having a sober nation. The added cigarette tax is a way to make up for all the lost revenue as sales of cigarettes and tax revenue from cigarettes declines. We are still a foreign oil dependent nation because top national leaders have gained their fortunes from oil and have greatly increased their profits recently.
This entire debate on “smoking” (of WHAT, ne’er said) needs to go back to Page One…to simply define the terms using actual science and medical information.
“Smoking” CAN mean smoking anything, tobacco or not. What we have in typical cigarettes usually IS anything…sometimes no tobacco included (!)but, instead, fake tobacco made in US Patented ways from Industrial Waste Cellulose. If a “scientist” or “doctor” or a “judge” can find tobacco smoke in THAT…then the fraud is obvious.
“Cigarette” can mean a paper-wrapped tube of anything that burns. If it is non-bleached paper that contains PLAIN tobacco, well, then we have a product that Has NOT yet been studied for harms that would justify any bans on tobacco OR tobacco smoke. It’s said that there’s hundreds of thousands of death in the US from “tobacco smoke” but…that is a) Not Proven Anywhere, and b) pretty much IMPOSSIBLE.
HOWEVER….if a cigarette was contaminated with chlorine pesticides and bleached paper, and if it contained Radiation from certain Still legal phosphate fertilizers, AND if it contained other Industrial toxins and carcinogens, AND if it contained STILL LEGAL Burn Accelerants…THEN we might get significant deaths.
Funny…the corporate establishment does not seek to ban the inescapably deadly contaminants…they prefer to let the perpetrators off a HUGE liability and criminal hook by Blaming the Victims and by Scapegoating a public domain, natural, traditionally-use, and pretty-much-non-studied TOBACCO plant.
“ETS” (Environmental Tobacco Smoke) is the prime evil target of smoke ban laws. See above about NO EVIDENCE yet presented in court about that smoke BEING “tobacco smoke”. The stuff WILL not be studied because…that would show it wasn’t tobacco smoke at all, OR that what tobacco smoke there is is so contaminated with INDUSTRIAL, non-tobacco toxins and carcinogens as to make the use of the word “tobacco” a LIE.
It is the Cigarette Makers, and their friends in pesticides, chlorine (source of dioxin), paper, pulp, sugar, ag products, pharmaceuticals (pesticides and cig additives) and etc AND all their powerful insurers and investors, AND complicit media, that call them “tobacco companies” or “Big Tobacco”. THAT is the Big Lie of the cigarette industry.
Question the base “tobacco” issue, and much of the rest will become clear. This current crusade is fraud to PROTECT the cig makers and the rest of their colleagues AND to protect the Public Officials who’ve let this homicidal cartel do whatever it wanted for DECADES…since the pesticides and etc entered the picture.
One CANNOT get nearly ALL so-called “smoking related” diseses from smoke from ANY plant…but those diseses are already Well Known to be caused by the dioxins, radiation and carbamate and organophosphate fertilizers and etc.
See: http://fauxbacco.blogspot.com
http://ktc.com/~bdrake
Or just start Googling things like “tobacco pesticides” “chlorine dioxin” “radiation tobacco”
“health effects dioxin”.
The big trick here will be to persuade those who “hate smoke” to stop for a second to consider if they’ve been lied to or not. It would be pathetic and tragic if, for the sake of having a “smoke free” bar etc, we all allow our medical, science and even LEGAL system to be co-opted for the sake of saving the cigarette industry and their Very Toxic supply network.
The penalties and liabilities from an HONEST and just investigation here COULD bring a fortune in health care funding to the ENTIRE public…not to mention compensation to secretly poisoned, defrauded, uninformed, unprotected victims…those who believe and are still told the products were just “tobacco”.
…not to mention an END to this socially divissive “smoking” battle AND and perhaps REAL reform in consumer product regulation.
Metroblogging Nashville: You are just at the tip of the cigarette.
See Metroblogging San Jose: Learn to Share