While I am not concerned with the effects of second hand smoke in parks or on the beaches, maybe the reasoning is as simple as litter control.
Beaches and parks (both of who are notoriously short of trash cans (where people seem to be)) seem to develop lots and lots of butts
I’d be okay with people smoking in public, if they inhaled all the smoke.
No, the reasoning is that Bloomberg has reached NY Mayor Stage 3: My Whims Are As The LORD Thy God!
Happens to any of 'em who stick around too long. Part of the reason we have term limits.
That’s 226 souls a week dying as a result of drunk drivers. The impact (pun intended) would be greater if those 226 souls were aboard a single Boeing 757 crashing every week someplace in America.
It’s all about marketing and perception. Anti-smoking has better marketing than drunk drivers. It also ties into which drug addiction is more socially acceptable. Alcohol has the upper hand here.
Ditto. I’d be cool with that. Oh Sam, if you don’t like how we live here, at least in some parts, here’s an idea… stay in Siam and stay the hell away from here. It isn’t even your country.
+1.
And now NYC is officially off the list of locations for my honeymoon, for this reason. They’re getting as nutty as California.
At least you’re being honest. For the last 30 years we’ve been hearing that it is to protect people in government buildings or hospitals who have no choice but to go there. Then it was grocery stores and other businesses so that people could work in offices without hurting themselves. Then it was comfort places like restaurants and then bars to protect the poor employees who were being beaten and forced to work in bars and restaurants. Now hotel rooms, beaches, and public parks. At least someone finally came along and gave the real reason for all of this instead of acting like a whiff of smoke will cause people to fall over dead..
I am a non-smoker. I’ve always been a non-smoker. I’m not in favor of smoking as a habit, and really don’t like when smokers flick their cigarette butts on the ground as if those butts were not litter.
Having said all this, this latest enactment by NYC is just stoopid. When I’m in a restaurant or bar, yeah, I have the right (imho) not to be inundated by second-hand smoke (I was fine with smoking sections and non-smoking sections, fwiw). But if I’m in the park, on the beach, or in Times Square, if your smoking is bothering me, I have the freedom to either ask you politely if you would consider putting out your cigarette for the moment (they really do bother my allergies), or to move away from where you are.
I’m all in favor of prosecuting people who nonchalantly toss their butts as any other litterer. But banning smoking in open-air, well-ventilated outdoor spaces? Dumb.
And if ‘private’ businesses want to decide if they will allow black people, or jews, or whatever, to be refused service at their business, we should allow that too?
That’s a littering issue, not a smoking issue. It’s akin to saying you don’t like speeders, so we should make driving cars illegal.
What, there can’t be dual motivations? It’s certainly both for me.
What’s not my own country? The US? You do know I’m an American and not Thai, don’t you?
I understand all the irrational up-in-arms fretting though, but it’ll die down over the years. Heard the same thing with seatbelt laws and a few other measures over the years.
Yes, you don’t need that freedom… it will feel so much better once we’ve improved you!
I sense withdrawal symptoms setting in among some already.
I sense sanctimonious pissantry setting in among whiny ass buttinsky assholes that ought to mind their own damn business.
Why are liberals so dead set against liberty?
[ Moderating ]
Enough with the one-liner responses and the (not actuallyl veiled) insults.
Everyone take a deep breath and either discuss the topic of the thread or let it die, peacefully.
[ /Moderating ]
I should probably point out at this juncture that it was not me who was responsible for this noble piece of New York legislation, nor did I have even the smallest part in it. But if it makes the smokers on this Board feel better to take it out on me, I don’t mind. The knicker-twisting makes for some amusing entertainment, and I was just as belligerant about smoking back when I was a puffer myself. Could it be that quitting smoking makes one a nicer person? Food for thought, and maybe just another reason to ban cigarettes? But anyway, I feel your pain, guys, hehehe.
As I remarked in the previous thread, people may want to get used to this. Feels like the coming wave, and I predict that 20 years from now it could very well be the norm. I doubt the minority of vocal hotheads who will inevitably spring up will be able to stop it. Maybe I’m wrong. We’ll certainly see.
If smokers aren’t welcome on government property, the government should stop taxing cigarettes.
And another thing, there is no hard scientific evidence whatsoever that the consumption of second hand smoke in open air places like parks has even the slightest negative effect on the physical health of non-smokers. This is entirely a case of one group pushing their personal aesthetic preferences on another.
All of you who support this ban because you don’t like the smell or the litter should be ashamed of yourselves. Don’t like the litter? Get 'em to put more bins up. Place a $100.00 fine on dropping cigarette butts. Plunge a fist into the massive, endless fucking tax pot generated by smokers, skim a little off the funds not earmarked for roadworks, children’s health programs, municipal buildings and, oh yeah, building fucking parks, and buy some more bins. Pay for more litter men. Then, once that’s out of the way, you can launch your crusade against chewing gum which generates about a billion times more unsightly litter than cigarettes.
And to all those who don’t like the smell? Find it offensive? Tough titty. So fucking what. I find great big fat people offensive but I don’t want to restrict their freedom of movement. If I’m eating in a public park, and I see some 30 stone sat-fat addict lumbering down the path with a dinky little crop top on, his pendulous rolls of cellulitic gut fat roiling like the tides of the ocean, it literally turns my stomach. It puts me off my food. Should we enact special modesty laws for fat people? FUCK NO! My delicate sensibilities aren’t anyone else’s fucking problem. If, after a hard day at work, I want to go to my local park to relax with a cigarette, what business is it of anybody else?
Discussing the problem of cigarette butts all over the ground with the posters of this forum is useless because, according to previous polls and discussions we’ve had on the subject, not one SDMB poster throws his butt on the ground. Although I have never personally seen this done at bus stops, in parks, or any other public area, apparently all our angels carry little containers to deposit their butts in so that they may properly dispose of them later.