Happy Day! New York is banning outdoor smoking at “municipal parks, beaches and even Times Square.” Story here.
Excerpt: “It will make it an offence to light up in any of the city’s 1,700 parks and along 14 miles (23km) of coastline … The ban is set to encompass pedestrian areas like the one in Times Square.”
God on ya, New York!
Oops! No, I’m not turning religious. That was supposed to be: “Good on ya, New York!”
Cities and towns could ban them, but the feds never will…there are several billion reasons why they won’t.
Passing by a smoker will result in a brief moment of smell (Maybe), but otherwise be extremely limited in any other effects upon the passerby.
Being an ex-smoker, I know and understand the dangers of smoking - and I don’t defend it. On the other hand, I find the attitudes of some non-smokers (i.e. never smoked) pretty deplorable.
Some of these non-smokers (mind you NOT all) will chastise a smoker, yet will blissfully jump behind the wheel of car drunk as a skunk endangering multiple people.
Drinking and driving is a voluntary activity and in most cases extremely dangerous to others, and is illegal. YET people continue to do so.
Smokers cannot smoke in places of work, restaurants, bars, malls, stores, places of public gatherings (rental halls, VFWs, KofC, etc), sports arena, concert halls, most beaches, some parks, etc. etc. 99.9% of the time you will not find a person smoking in these locations. There is always the idiot(s) who ignores rules. Yet one can get drunk in most of these places, and jump into a car afterward.
Two points:
How many people have (conclusively) died from second-hand smoke?
EPA has concluded that exposure to secondhand smoke can cause lung cancer in adults who do not smoke. EPA estimates that exposure to secondhand smoke causes approximately 3,000 lung cancer deaths per year] in nonsmokers.
http://www.epa.gov/smokefree/healtheffects.html
How many people have died as a result of drunk driving?
In 2008, 11,773 people were killed in alcohol-impaired driving crashes, accounting for nearly one-third (32%) of all traffic-related deaths in the United States.
http://www.cdc.gov/MotorVehicleSafety/Impaired_Driving/impaired-drv_factsheet.html
Drinkers also stink. Some also stumble into others, can get rude, crude and lewd. Drunk drivers kill, main and injure. Some drinkers cause fights and altercations resulting in injuries, maiming, and death.
Why isn’t there a louder and harsher cry to also ban drinking??
Well, that’s one place my tourist dollars will no longer be going.
The three posts above this one were originally posted to this thread, titled “It should be illegal to smoke on the street.” I’ve split them into a new thread because that topic had died down and because the OP has been banned (and may have been trolling in any case).
I’m all for that. It’s hard going for stroll to all of these common places and you are forced to inhale someones smoke. Then the children have to be subjected to this as well. I hope they continue to ban smoking at other locations.
We’ll be there next year. Looks like we picked a good time.
I can see an argument for certain spaces where, in fact, sharing the space with a smoker does force you that close. Smoking on the sidewalk is still permitted?
But parks? Nobody is forced to inhale a smoker’s effluent in a park.
I, for one, despise being forced to inhale smoke in each of Central Park’s 843 acres.
Good riddance!
I also wish tossing a lit butt out the window of your car was treated with the same enforcement as if you had tossed out a trash bag.
So… nothing?
I don’t smoke and don’t like smoking, but I think this is beginning to get a bit silly.
WRT drinking, I’d like to point out that it is already illegal to expose other drivers to secondhand drunkenness, everywhere you can drive a car.
What about drinking?
And you’re right, it is getting silly. I’d love to see all cigarettes disappear from the face of the earth.
And there we have the real motivation. It isn’t “I don’t want you to affect me by doign this.” It’s “I don’t want you to do this.”
I’m doing my job, one butt at a time.
I agree with you, and don’t agree with the approach, but do agree with the inevitable results.
And I’d love to see all sanctimonious, interfering, self-righteous wankers disappear from the face of the earth.
Unfortunately that doesn’t seem to be happening.
How about a compromise: smoke all you want, where you want, just don’t flick butts all over the place, m’kay?
As I said earlier, I would support smoking bans in public. Just allow private business property owners to decide if they want to allow it there.
But you are back tracking. You have made it oh so crystal clear it has nothing to do with any effect on you. Even if there is zero impact on you, you want smoking to stop.
Let me put it to you this way: for years and years smoking was legal in bars. It sucked! It took making that illegal for bars to become smoke free, not the actions of private business decisions.
Smoking really doesn’t affect me at all, and someone complaining about it in an open-air place is ridiculous. But, cigarette butt litter really annoys the hell out of me. If a smoking ban in public places lessens the butt litter, then great.
I was surprised to see that NYC is taking this step (and also surprised to see that the BBC evidently believes members of the N.Y. City Council are called “councillors”). As an editorial in the N.Y. Times (which has supported prior public smoking bans) said, this latest step is an overreach.
There are situations in which it is proper to prohibit “public” smoking (i.e. in stadiums with poor air flow, areas immediately adjacent to building entrances etc.). Prohibiting smoking at parks and beaches does not make sense to me. If such an ordinance came to a vote in my community, I’d be on the “no” side - no matter how enjoyable it is to see smokers squirm after years of inflicting their habit on everyone around them. A sufficient case for public health/employee benefit cannot be made here, unlike the situation for bars and restaurants.
choo…choo…choo… (sound of train disappearing in the distance long after departing the station). 