City Council president Jeff Gahan had two interesting things to say last night, both coming during speaking time allotted to public officials.
First, he announced that at the council's next meeting on July 7, one or more council committees to examine housing conditions in New Albany will be established. NAC applauds CM Gahan's interest in drawing attention to this issue.
Second, there will be a public hearing to be held at 6:00 p.m. on July 7 (prior to the regular council meeting) on the topic of an indoor smoking ban in New Albany. According to the council president, there was little public interest in a ban last year when the idea was briefly introduced by the gloriously departed Larry Kochert (see below), but now a newly heightened awareness suggests that a ban be revisited.
(Shrug) ... looks like I was wrong about this one. Here's what I wrote on January 11, 2008:
At the conclusion of Monday’s New Albany city council meeting, former councilman Larry Kochert’s smoking ordinance was quietly struck from the lengthy list of accumulated, tabled ordinances, where it had reposed in unceremonious limbo for so long that I can’t remember when it was first proposed.
In truth, not a soul on last year’s dysfunctional council besides Kochert cared to expend a farthing of political spare change on the matter, and even Da King himself abandoned the idea almost as fast as he broached it. That’s no surprise, because as phantasmagoric Kochertian legacies go, the smoking ban ordinance was right down the center of the plate, with much puffing, posturing and pontificating, followed by serial inaction and the eventual hushed dumping of the evidence at night alongside the street spam and litter by the side of the legislative goat path.
So, what are the prospects for the issue of a smoking ban returning to the city council’s agenda during the next four years? I don’t see a smoking ban advocate among the current group, do you?
Apparently there are two or three. After all, we've already courageously dealt with novelty lighters. Of course, there'll be more to say on this matter. Until then, here are entertaining links to three previous articles
Dark ages, New Albany smoking ban back in the news.
How to extend your fringe, to curb your butt, and to recite the Lord's Prayer -- and other city council items.
Emperor Kochert’s newly progressive anti-smoking clothes -- and their utterly striking invisibility.
Smoking bans are the real threat to Democracy
ReplyDeleteThe bandwagon of local smoking bans now steamrolling across the nation -
from sea to sea- has nothing to do with protecting people from the supposed
threat of "second-hand" smoke.
Indeed, the bans themselves are symptoms of a far more grievous threat; a
cancer that has been spreading for decades and has now metastasized
throughout the body politic, spreading even to the tiniest organs of local
government. This cancer is the only real hazard involved - the cancer of
unlimited government power.
The issue is not whether second-hand smoke is a real danger or a phantom
menace, as a study published recently in the British Medical Journal
indicates. The issue is: if it were harmful, what would be the proper
reaction? Should anti-tobacco activists satisfy themselves with educating
people about the potential danger and allowing them to make
their own decisions, or should they seize the power of government and force
people to make the "right" decision?
Supporters of local tobacco bans have made their choice. Rather than
attempting to protect people from an unwanted intrusion on their health, the
tobacco bans are the unwanted intrusion.
Loudly billed as measures that only affect "public places," they have
actually targeted private places: restaurants, bars, nightclubs, shops, and
offices - places whose owners are free to set anti-smoking rules or whose
customers are free to go elsewhere if they don't like the smoke. Some local
bans even harass smokers in places where their effect on others is obviously
negligible, such as outdoor public parks.
The decision to smoke, or to avoid "second-hand" smoke, is a question to be
answered by each individual based on his own values and his own assessment
of the risks. This is the same kind of decision free people make regarding
every aspect of their lives: how much to spend or invest, whom to befriend
or sleep with, whether to go to college or get a job, whether to get married
or divorced, and so on.
All of these decisions involve risks; some have demonstrably harmful
consequences; most are controversial and invite disapproval from the
neighbours. But the individual must be free to make these decisions. He must
be free, because his life belongs to him, not to his neighbours, and only
his
own judgment can guide him through it.
Yet when it comes to smoking, this freedom is under attack. Cigarette
smokers are a numerical minority, practicing a habit considered annoying and
unpleasant to the majority. So the majority has simply commandeered the
power of government and used it to dictate their behaviour.
That is why these bans are far more threatening than the prospect of
inhaling a few stray whiffs of tobacco while waiting for a table at your
favourite restaurant. The anti-tobacco crusaders point in exaggerated alarm
at those wisps of smoke while they unleash the systematic and unlimited
intrusion of government into our lives.
We do not elect officials to control and manipulate our behaviour.
They are in office to serve us, not vice- versa.
So, you are against the ban?
ReplyDeleteThey're already talking about exemptions in an article on the Courier web site.
ReplyDelete3rd district CM Steve Price, who seems to use "fuzzy math" fairness as a principle only when it's convenient, is quoted as saying he would want bars and private clubs exempted because they should be allowed to choose.
No explanation, of course, as to why some should be able to choose and others shouldn't. I guess fairness isn't convenient in this case.
I think its a wonderful idea.
ReplyDeleteI enjoy dinners and social events in Louisville at facilities governed by their ordinance.
My ghetto swelling yard people were here this week. Brought their new baby to show off. Adorable 4 month old who just had his first hospitalization for bronchitis...told to while Mom smoked a cigerette. I basically hire them to do a really bad job cutting my grass, because a. I figure they need to money bad, b. it gives a chance to have some of my little public service chats with them. I thought of giving Mom and Dad my speech about smoking around a baby, but decided they'd probably received this lecture at the hospital. So my point is this: My main concern here is the embarassingly high number of abused and/or neglected children that are "grown" here. If we can't stop babies from being subjected to second-hand smoke, then while pick on adults who technically are mature enough to make their own choices? What's really behind this smoking ban? Sure, we'd just be catching up (once again) with the rest of the country, but we've got bigger problems to solve, I think.
ReplyDeletethere is nothing in the constitution of the United States in regards to the rights of smoking. if so, please let me know where i can find such law, bill of rights, etc.
ReplyDeletei'm thinking that animals might be a on the ball here...when they see smoke, they run like hell the other way...hmmmmm...they might be onto something.
have a great day!
I'm with lawguy. I'll be delighted if New Albany joins the rest of the civilized world and bans smoking in public venues.
ReplyDeleteCount me among those in agreement with Lawguy...
ReplyDeleteTake a good walk down the street in a city where indoor smoking is banned. Look in the gutters, on the sidewalks, look at the scorched and burned maulch surrounding buildings and in landscaping in publicly accessable areas.
ReplyDeleteWe enacted a "smoking ban on our property at work, at the strong urging of the hospotal campus that surrounds us. ashtrays were promptly removed, and thus far there have been at least a dozen fires in the mulch around our building, and the piles of butts littering the ground is disgusting.
Yes, I am a smoker, and NO I do not like smoke hanging out when I am eating, I do not smoke indoors, 9 times out of 10 I do not smoke in buildings when it is allowed.
But I do not agree with the bans. We as should be held accountable for our own decisions, we are free to make the choice whether to patronize establishments who allow smoking, and those who do not.
NO there is no Constitutional section promising the freedom to smoke, yet is there one that promises the freedom from encountering SHS? Not that I can remember...
We keep applauding efforts by government to take away small chunks of freedom from sections of society, and most times we push for it ourselves, never stopping to ask if they ban this, then what is going to be next when the Abersolds, and Hannahs of our community find they have nothing left to bitch an moan about, because they will find something, and when it hits something that matters to some of the anti-tobacco nazis, (who for the most part are paid by the tobacco settlement funds, as well as the civil city of New Albany collecting a large sum of money from tobacco), I digress, when the next head on the chopping block hits the nerve of the those lining up to support smoking bans, they will be the ones scratching their heads wondering how it got to this...
"We as should be held accountable for our own decisions, we are free to make the choice..."
ReplyDeletewhen you exercise your choice to smoke, you crap all over those who choose NOT to smoke. there is no ventillation, filtration system in eateries or bars to filter out the 600 carcinogens that you "choose" to put out into the atmosphere.
so where's might right to exercise my choice to breathe "clean" fresh air?!
you paint a great picture with your discription of how smokers liter the ground with all their cigarette butts...now just imagine all that second hand smoke doing the same to non-smokers lung's.
have a great day!
Chris, just know that what will frame this debate, just as the other smoking ban debates, has little if anything to do with individual freedom or responsibility.
ReplyDeleteIt is a workplace safety issue and nothing else. If folks argue your angle, there will in effect be no opposition to the ban.
The question is this: Does science support the harm of SHS to employees of a business, who are supposed to be protected on their job site. If so, then every indoor area with people working in it must be cleansed of smoke. If not, then there should be no ban at all. There is no gray area, and there can be no exceptions without blatant hypocrisy.
There'll be more here on this topic later in the week.
CDC information on secondhand smoke
ReplyDeleteRoger,
ReplyDeleteUnderstood and accepted, but the truth is that is exactly what it is about. The Abersolds and Andi Hannahs use that exact angle to accomplish what they had thus far been unable to accomplish, due largly in part to the fact there was no support from either side of the coin for the true morives behind the bans, a vocal group forcefully controlling the LEGAL behavior of a minority of peoples.
Now I am reminded why I bowed out of the local political scene.