Logically speaking, all businesses should buy state tobacco licenses and become retailers, right?

Yesterday’s post about New Albany’s ongoing Greatly Unnecessary Smoking Debate of ’08 generated a plethora of comments, and I’d say that more than a few cans of worms were opened.
Council smoking farce: I'm taking it personally, too.

I read the essay aloud last evening on New Albany Now (blog talk radio), and Randy Smith provides this link if you wish to hear the spoken word.

Today, let’s focus on the comments generated yesterday. On the topic of the proposed ban’s effect on business, Ruthanne wrote:

Many businesses close because they were already struggling and/or the owners were ready to retire or move on.

Recall that in yesterday’s piece, I wrote:

The impact may indeed be short-term for my own business, but in an uncertain economy, and with consumers beset by rising prices, who among us should be forced by legislative fiat to make such a short-term sacrifice?

Quite frankly, the more I thought about Ruthanne’s comment last evening, the more puzzled I became. There is no way of knowing whether her “struggling … ready to retire” statement is true or not, although I’ve heard it repeated often by the pro-ban lobby both here and elsewhere. One thing that strikes me is that anyone repeating it without forethought may well have never owned a business.

As an example, the owners of the B & B tavern recently moved from Main Street to a new location, the former Stan's. I don’t know them personally, and they don’t run the type of tavern I favor, but those two points matter very little. It is clear from their comments to the Tribune that they believe the vast majority of their clientele to be smokers, and given the necessity of any business owner knowing his or her market, they obviously included this observation – this market research – in their plan of operation.

Also, they've just moved to the new location. Anyone who knows anything about such matters realizes that whether starting up fresh or moving, it's a big challenge for a business at the beginning.

Now, with little warning, the owners of the B & B are being told that their smokers will not be welcomed inside. There isn’t much space at the site to build a grandiose outside area, as might be possible at my own business, and anyway, they may not have any cash left to do it after the move.

So, having established that they're "already struggling" because they've only recently started anew, and now that they’re being given a not-so-gentle governmental shove, what are we to conclude if they can’t make it?

That they were struggling, anyway?

With the unspoken corollary: They must not have been very good business people, anyway.

Sounds like a self-fulfilling prophecy to me, although I could be mistaken. Furthermore, if ban proponents are going to shrug at places like the B & B, and blame its ensuing economic misfortune on it and not the legislators yanking the rug from beneath its feet, all the while trusting that respectable people like Sam Anderson and Roger Baylor need only spend more of their bountiful money to cope with the effects of the ban, then I believe we have steamed full throttle back into elitism, plain and simple.

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I'll confess that in order to make the following somewhat coherent, I've had to miss a few contexts on the fringe. Readers are welcomed to check back with yesterday's thread to view the overall ebb and flow. Ruthanne made the case for an exemption.

Bluegill wants no exemptions. The only one I'm aware of is tobacco stores. Unlike other businesses, the sale of tobacco products is their sole purpose. Tobacco is, after all, still legal. There are no children admitted and second-hand smoke is not an issue, as non-smokers/tobacco users would not be patronizing such a store.

My blogging partner Bluegill answered.

Whether or not non-smokers are present is not an issue, unless you're regulating preference rather than workplace safety (and claiming that smokers are less worthy of protection).

To be honest, if Kaiser's hadn't been here so long, I don't think that provision would have been included. Even Tommy pointed out that his exemption was bollocks.

The fact that some of the council smiled and nodded as if to say "you're welcome" when he said thanks for exempting his family from the law was a pretty pathetic display of either contempt for equality or supreme ignorance.

BTW, if tobacco is the root of all the problems you say it is, why, of all people, should the council single out the family that makes its living by selling it for exemption? Shouldn't they be trying to drive them from our midst in the interest of public health and medicare savings?

Not all tobacco users smoke and there are plenty of other businesses besides tobacco stores where all or a majority of the employees smoke. How many separate but equal situations do you want to endorse? ...

... At this stage of the game, not a single council member gets it. Make it fair or don't do it. Given the majority's constant CYA maneuvering, I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

Maybe we should get Jamey Aebersold to advocate for code enforcement. Do the Kaisers own any rental property?

Bluegill continued to explore elitism.

You all can argue as much as you want but, as long as the ordinance contains the type of exceptions and exemptions that (councilman) John (Gonder) has already voted for once, the ban isn't about public health. It's about personal preferences.

If it's about public health, then all workers must be protected and not just some, unless John and others would like to explain why some lives are worth more than others. That's what the proposed ordinance says, and that's elitist.

He went on to elaborate:

What a lot of this boils down to is the ability to pass ordinances at little to no financial cost.

Like many other ordinances on New Albany's books, the smoking ban (no matter how it's written) is destined to fail in implementation because there's no one to enforce it.

Hell, ban walking and we can all wave to each other as we pass on the sidewalk, just like we've always done.

We'll know the majority of the council is sincere about anything having to do with public health when they agree to pay for enforcement.

We'll know they're sincere about the law at all when they agree to legally and equitably redistrict and at least act like the foundation of democracy means anything to them.

Until then, ANY law they pass will be a matter of saying that everyone should be required to follow the rules except them.

If that's not hypocritical and elitist, what is?

And, Bluegill concludes:

Whether or not an exemption filled ban could withstand a direct legal challenge (and I don't think it could based on the (Louisville) precedent that Roger mentioned on-air) is only part of the picture.

If smoking ban foes are clever enough, they'll also challenge this council's authority to enact any legislation.(Better to do it now than to wait for the slumlords to do it.)

In order to rebuff that challenge, the council would have to prove that their authority was granted through a legal election process. They can't really do that.

I'm intrigued, also, by Randy's on-air assertion that if an exception was made to the ban, he'd immediately insist that he, too, be granted the sovereignty to decide the smoking issue for his own business. But, he says here in print that he supports the ordinance as written.

Why do the exemptions in the current ordinance not matter? Or why would new ones matter more or less?

Re: the vote argument- I would hope that most sensible citizens and, quite frankly, our attorney friends especially, would spend their time and talents arguing that everyone should be treated equally under the law rather than trying to justify why they're not.

Then again, Jerry Ulrich may have more job security than anyone in town. The way things are going, the next vote might be to dedicate EDIT money to the council's legal defense fund.