| smoking bans
Posted: 5/1/2008 6:57:23 AM | QUOTE: Well it's virtually self policing. No authority figure is patrolling the bars and clubs looking for law breakers. Most people I meet outside having a fag seem to have some small grievences usually related to how cold or windy it is, but most accept it as a good thing. Our bars and clubs no longer stink, your clothes smell ok when you get home and the 'passive smoking' brigade are now silent. Nipping outside for a fag have given us 'smirting'. A good way to start chatting up other people.
By far and way though, the very best thing is that our children don't see adults smoking much any more. Smoking is learned behaviour and the next two or three generations will see an end to smoking and therefore to one of the most damaging and dangerous additions known to mankind. I am lead to understand that some 250,000 people have given up since the ban. Hurray.
^^^ Well put, I agree w/your sentiments. Although here in Chicago , as far as the self-policing, yes it is of course mostly that but here near where I live we have had two bars ticketed I believe $500 each for letting patrons flout the ban ~ evidently non smokers complained and called them in. There are these Cook County phone numbers posted all around which one can call and complain if one's in an establishment and people are smoking now. According to our local paper the bar owners in question were told that the second fine would be $1500 to $2000 and could cost them a "review" of their liquor license ~ so my guess is they will not allow patrons to take it lightly any longer. Who can afford to ?? | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/1/2008 7:29:09 AM |
Although here in Chicago , as far as the self-policing, yes it is of course mostly that but here near where I live we have had two bars ticketed I believe $500 each for letting patrons flout the ban ~ evidently non smokers complained and called them in. There are these Cook County phone numbers posted all around which one can call and complain if one's in an establishment and people are smoking now.
Ah yes, the perfect mechanism for the spineless who couldn't possibly comprehend the concept of confrontation without intervention from mommy government.
They used to call them tattletales. And didn't Hitler use the same exact mechanism with Germany's youth? | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/1/2008 7:50:55 AM | | ^^ Perhaps, or Mao. But it's really not quite as serious as all that. They didn't kick in the offenders' doors in the middle of the night and "disappear" them. They merely ticketed the bar owner(s) and asked them to please abide by the law like everyone else and make the smokers stand outside the establishment. Comparisons with Hitler and such are quite silly because while people were reported on in totalitarian countries certainly, the consequences in many of those cases were indefinite imprisonment at hard labor, or death -- not being asked to step outside with your cigarette, or in the worst case issued a citation which you can mail back in with payment. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/1/2008 8:48:51 AM | Certainly. Not as extreme as Hitler etc. But I just look at it as a 'cultivation of mind set' kind of thing ('if this was ok then, then THIS must be ok now').
As it is, this is just another stepping stone leading the government right into my house.
As it is now, if I hire a maid, and she doesn't like my smoke, and Illinois laws require that employers to provide a work free smoke place, then she can sue me under the Illinois Clean Air Act of 1993.
And it really irks me when I'm in my little small town bar smoking along with all of the other regulars who smoke, and two complete strangers walk in and stare at us. Then the next day I'll find out the bar got narced on. Those people had never set foot in the place before, but just HAD to come and rain on our parade, as if they get some sort of perverse pleasure in causing their fellow citizens pain. Exactly like Hitler's youth did.
And down here, I know, drink and smoke with the chief of police. People have asked him when he's going to start enforcing the law. He says, "with what manpower? I'm having a hard enough time keeping my officers in their patrol cars so they can hear the radio. They have to be at least fifteen feet away from the door of their vehicles to smoke." | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/1/2008 9:22:28 AM | | ^^^ Well for what it's worth I wouldn't be the type to place calls of complaint like that personally. I think it's pretty lame to do that, and I also don't believe in helping the (usually annoying and oftentimes power-tripping) police or other authorities very much at all, so.....I usually just figure, if I see people smoking somewhere, F__k it, if they get cited they get cited but it's not my place to be calling them in about it either. Why should I personally be instrumental in costing the bar owner $$ (or possibly his license even) if I could also just get up and leave? What do the cops do to help me out, you know?? I figure , unless I've just seen someone getting violently assaulted, let them do their own police work basically. I never help them out by diming on anyone. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/1/2008 10:29:18 AM | "powertripping police officers"
Don't get me started. Got plenty here.
Tasered an eighty lb slow kid to death last year. "Internal" investigation revealed no wrongdoing. Kid's crime? Standing on street corner holding a bible shouting he wanted Jesus. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/2/2008 4:55:02 AM | Sorry to hear someone got fined for breaching. WTF. You shouldn't need to have a fine when it comes to this subject. Sounds like you ought to try teaching people some good manners. If it's no smoking, it's no smoking. You don't smoke in your hospitals and schools and public buildings or your planes and buses do you? . Lack of respect's is what you have there mate nothing any law is going to change.
Try to remember the lives you will be saving when you finally eradicate the use of this drug around the world. One small step for mankind remember. If it's your addiction it's your problem, manage it. No smoking means no smoking, it's not hard
What is it with you Americans, your looking to label your police like Hitler because some 'citizens' have no respect for others. Nice society you live in. Yes over here it is self policing, even the bars where the alchoholics and drug problem people drink. Even they still show respect for the law and for other people. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/2/2008 5:28:48 AM | It's not like that everywhere. This is a very big country.
The smoking ban went into effect without a whimper, at least in Marin County where I have a house, same in NYC, and DC. Alexandria, VA has voluntary smoking restriction that over half the restaurants adhere to at this point. Smoking bans and restrictions are the preference in all three locations. I divide my time rather evenly between CA, NY and DC, and have never run into a problem, FWIW. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/2/2008 7:44:14 AM | I'm sure it's not mate. Think everyone just got engrossed in the discussion without taking a step back to think about what they were saying.
The 'war on tobacco' is a war we can win. Within a few generations we will see and end to it's common use. You should be supporting bans on all tobacco use in public, even in the street. We owe it to our children and we would reduce one of the largest causes of unnecessary deaths in the western world.
Once you have seen that you can defeat one of the most addictive substances known to mankind, you will then see how to defeat the other drug problems you have with cocaine and such like.
Not having a fag with your beer seems like a small price to pay given what it would save you in lives and money. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/2/2008 11:26:35 PM |
Once you have seen that you can defeat one of the most addictive substances known to mankind, you will then see how to defeat the other drug problems you have with cocaine and such like.
Tobacco legal.
Grown legally, sold legally. Taxed
Only thing is where you can smoke it now.
Governments should do away with all smoking bans. Just make Tabacco products illegal
Cocaine illegal.
Smuggled in and sold illegally. No Taxes.
To defaet the other illegal drugs.
I do not see how, it could be done.
Fact is tobbaco and other illegal drugs have been around for millions of years.
They were used by people back then and still used today. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/3/2008 12:11:12 AM | Sorry to disagree with you badger but to make tobacco illegal would be counter productive.
When you made alcohol illegal you handed vat sums of money and power to criminals. Amounts of money so vast that even back then it was sufficient to 'buy' their way into your government and other positions of power. To build great cities like they did in Las Vagas, to corrupt your political and legal systems almost beyond repair and to believe that they could 'buy' a another country as a place of sanctuary as they did with Cuba.
You streets are now flooded with Cocaine and Crack as mine are rapidly becoming too and still to this day billions of dollars and pounds are falling into the hands of our criminal organisations who I would suggest do not use these funds for the good of our societies but serve only to hurt it.
Billions upon billions of dollars go to provide guns and other weapons which are used against your sons and daughters in Iraq and elsewhere and many other people around the world are subjigated and terrorised by criminals all paid for from money raised through drugs. The drug business is what funds and controls your gangs. They are the low end footsoldiers in this industry and they are used as a supply network for the real drug lords who you very rarely ever see brought to justice.
Drugs are what paid for your defeat in Vietnam and they funded 25 years of terrorism in Northern Ireland. They are what will probably see you defeated in Iraq too. Drugs are what makes you streets a place of driveby shootings and gang warfare, drugs are robbing us of your childrens futures, drugs are responsible for the vast majority of our crime and keep millions of people around the world in poverty and fear.
AND YOU WANT TO ADD ANOTHER SOURCE OF INCOME TO THESE CRIMINALS?. You would be insane to do that. Mind you since you Americans seem to hero woship these people maybe I should not be so surprised.
Can you or anyone else in here even begin to calculate how much money has been given to criminals since the introduction of prohibition. All the income from Alcohol, Heroin, Cocaine, Crack and the other organised crimes committed by the mafia and other criminal groups. Are there enough zero's in the wold for such a number.
Amounts of money equal too or greater than the GNP of most nations on earth. If you still have any room left on the page when you have calculated this total, try adding on what you and other nations have spent fighting the 'war on drugs'. Jeeze, I've just run out of brain space trying to figure it out. Try asking what they might have done with this money. Just what do you buy when your income runs into trillions of dollars and no taxes to pay?. Your a paraniod nation, go figure that one out and add it to one or other of your conspiracy theories I hear so often in here.
Do you not realise that in order to defeat these people and to eliminate this blight on our society we have to fight in a way we can win. Thats what you are doing when you take on tobaco in the way you are doing now. Through education and through public support and acceptance.
Keep tobacco freely available as it is now but educate people to understand that it is a form of self harm and is socially unacceptable which is the truth and remember you got people started on smoking by telling them it was good for them and socially acceptable. No-one smokes because they like it or because it is good for them or gives them a high. Smoking is a learned behaviour, mostly you lean it from you parents or other family members or friends. Stop teaching the kids that it is good / acceptable and smoking will die within one or two generations.
Your winning this war, don't start trying to grab defeat from the jaws ofvictory. Support your governments and do everything you can to make smoking history. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/3/2008 12:30:38 AM | >>>By far and way though, the very best thing is that our children don't see adults smoking much any more.
Because its out of the areas that children aren't allowed to be(bars), and instead is mandatory for it to be out on the sidewalk, where the children can watch? How does that make sense?
>>>You shouldn't need to have a fine when it comes to this subject. Sounds like you ought to try teaching people some good manners. If it's no smoking, it's no smoking. You don't smoke in your hospitals and schools and public buildings or your planes and buses do you?
Ha!
So you think the mere existence of the law is going to make it not happen? You may not like it, but by outlawing something and placing fine and threatening to close stores down because your beliefs are absolute, then you have to deal with the reality that, yes, you ARE going to be fining people- yes, you ARE going to close down bars who do not agree with your laws. This is the world you are promoting- don't dilute yourself of it.
Nor is it the Governments position to dictate 'manners' and demand people follow them. There is no law in existence claiming you have a right to be free from offense. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/3/2008 1:12:36 AM | Do you have a law which tells you not to pick your nose and eat it in a resturant?, Do you have a law which tells you to take care of your personal hygene, do you have a law that tells you not to burp in the face of your host at dinner?, do you have a law to tell you not to spit at someone's feet in the street?. Do you have a law which tells you not to piss in the corridors in your hospitals and schools?. Maybe you do I'm starting to wonder about you Americans.
Your government is not responsible for you showing good manners and respect to others. Thats your responsibility mate not theirs. If you have to impose fines on someone for smoking where they shouldn't then all you have is bad manners and no law will ever work.
before this extension to the smoking ban, did you see it as an errosion of your freedoms not to smoke in your schools, hospitals, gas stations, other peoples homes who don't smoke, your libraries, on your buses, Did you light up a fag when discussing your childrens progress at school on parent / teacher days. If not, then can you please tell me why you need a law to stop smoking in bars, restuarants and in the street?
Just put up a $5 sign saying no smoking and it's a no smoking place. End off. Break this ban and I'm going to pick my nose and flick bogies at you whilst your eating.
You are a sad sad people.
No smoking means no smoking, what are you finding difficult about that? | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/3/2008 4:50:30 AM | Flouting smoking bans is not a widespread practice in the US. But don't delude yourself in thinking that it doesn't happen occasionally in the UK as well.
Defiant bar owner finds 'loophole' to flout smoking ban
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=472889&in_page_id=1770
Man arrested after refusing to put out his cigarette in pub
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=466368&in_page_id=1770
Landlord faces action over smoking ban rebellion
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2007/jul/20/smoking
As I said, I haven't seen it where I live, and apparently you haven't seen it either, however, it happens. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/4/2008 8:04:20 AM | What your point? You find yourself a Englishman flouting the law!. Yes we have people with bad manners too I'm sorry to say. Always have a few renegades just like we did with seatbelts. Foolish people with limited intellegence and lack of respect for others.
How does this change the fact that you've got seven pages full of them and no-one over here is saying "look he's got no manners so it's OK for me not too have any to".
No smoking means no smoking. Lack of respect is lack of respect same here as it is there. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/4/2008 8:46:49 AM | Do any of you know of Bill Godshall. The smoking ban is again on delay in Pennsylvania and Bill has filed law suits.
He has a site where you could write letters urging law makers into those indoor smoking bans.
Many people whine about second hand smoke but what's more dangerous for me is not being sun screened on the beach. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/4/2008 8:59:44 PM |
What your point? You find yourself a Englishman flouting the law!. Yes we have people with bad manners too I'm sorry to say. Always have a few renegades just like we did with seatbelts. Foolish people with limited intellegence and lack of respect for others.
My point is that laws are flouted everywhere. I only put a couple of links up for you. There's also a web site dedicated to overthrowing the UK smoking ban among numerous others.
I agree with you that we should obey our laws. However, people with bad manners come from all over the world. I've met them in London, Paris, Zurich, Rome, Athens, Tokyo, Beijing, and a number of other places.
Fortunately, most people have good manners and respect the law, including those who live in the US. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/4/2008 10:51:45 PM | SMOKING IS BAD! BAN SMOKING!
So many people now are on the non-smoking bandwagon. All the while they get smoking banned in more places they always say stuff like, "it's for the health of others", "Smoking is bad for you", "Smoking causes (insert your bullshit number here) deaths per year" blah blah blah. Auto accidents kill more people and yet we do nothing about banning those. So the amount of people that smoking may or may not kill is a worthless argument.
Doesn't it bother you all (or at least make you wonder) that the government, that would be the same government enacting these bans, still subsidize the tobacco farmers? If tobacco is so bad then why do that?
How about the taxes on cigarettes? The government (that would be the feds, the states and locals) make HUGE incomes on the taxes on cigarettes. The majority of all the money charged for a pack of smokes is taxes. They (the gov.) know that now is the time they can raise taxes on cigarettes and gain more money to blow because they know that the smokers are a minority.
But about that "tobacco" tax. Do you all realize that it's a "ciggarette" tax not a "tobacco" tax? Those taxes don't get lobbed onto cigars, pipe tobacco, or even loose leaf rolling tobacco. So if tobacco is evil and people feel the need to tax it at insane levels, why not tax cigars the same? I'm sure it couldn't be because most of the fraknuts making the laws smoke cigars. Nah, that couldn't be it.
How would the goverments replace this tax if all the smokers actually stopped smoking like all the non-smokers want? We're talking BILLIONS here folks. What would they go after next to make up for this lack of tax monies?
How can anyone even argue that a business owner be forced into not allowing a certain type of person? It's the owners place, it should be left up to the owner if they want to have a smoking establishment or a non-smoking one.
The only argument is "it's a public place" and that certain people want to go into this place and they do not want anybody smoking. Then they usually add in about how dangerous smoking is. That's it! That's the argument for banning smoking in restaurants and bars. Regardless of how many people that go to this restaurant/bar and smoke, it does not matter. The owner has no say in the matter. Even IF they installed seperate areas completely partitioned off with seperate air systems (like in D.C.) it is still not allowed.
But to stop at public restaurants and bars is not enough for these anti-smokers! They even DEMAND that it be enforced in "private clubs"! For you folks that don't know what this means is that there are places that people can go to eat or have a drink that are "private" which means not open to the public, you have to be a member to even enter the place. What the F? You all anti-smoking-nazis are going after the private clubs? Why?
This is all just a crock-o-shit! It's just one more way that allows one group of people to decide the way that you should live your own life. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 5/5/2008 6:22:37 AM | | Just wait. Fat is next. Fatties will be banned under the same pretext as 2nd hand smoke. Something like- "It's unhealthy to be fat, and the appearance and/or viewing of fat people can cause acceptance of fat as being OK, by children who are not fat. " Big Bro is coming to a town near you! | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 6/24/2008 9:06:48 AM |
Just wait. Fat is next...blah blah blah More of the slippery slope stuff eh? That's the best you can come up with?
If you smokers want to live in a place where they allow smoking everywhere, you should head to China. The Chinese are free to smoke just about anywhere...it should be your dream destination.  | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 6/24/2008 9:16:25 AM |
The Chinese are free to smoke just about anywhere...it should be your dream destination.
Ironic isn't it that a communist country prescribes more to the Constitution of the United States than does the United States. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 6/24/2008 10:13:43 AM | | Man Ohio went smoke free 3 years ago. i also have to be so far away from the front door.Cops can ticket you over this. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 6/24/2008 10:22:36 AM | ^ ^ ^ ^ ^ When the Founding Fathers wrote the Constitution and Bill of Rights the idea was to extend liberty as much as possible, and up to where it impedes with the next individual.
So you can drink (prohibition notwithstanding), but you can't drink to impairment and then drive a car. The reason you can't do that is you could injure another human being. Do you argue with the constitutionality of drunk driving laws?
You can also smoke, but increasingly there are regulations about smoking in public places because you can injure non-smokers with second-hand smoke. We have never been able to smoke in elevators, no longer can smoke in federal buildings, all (or at least most) state buildings, and most workplaces. This is being extended now to restaurants and bars.
The non-smoking population of the United States is approximately 80 percent (higher in many states like California -- home to one of every 9 people in the US). So do you think the minority -- which is inflicting a safety hazard on the majority -- has a right to adversely affect the public health?
Please give me specifics on HOW restricting smoking is unconstitutional. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 6/24/2008 11:17:21 AM | | Since California has been smoke free in public places for such a long time, I forget that other states don't have this in place as well. I love it, I'm glad it's in place here. | |
|
| smoking bans
Posted: 6/24/2008 3:23:19 PM | Ontario Canada just passed a law that you are not allowed to smoke in your vehicle if you have a child under 16 in it with you.
I have mixed feelings about it. I understand the need to protect the children from second smoke. But I think the gov't is going to far with this now. | |
|
Home
login 
